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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, by 
+William H. Armstrong
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals
+       As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac
+
+Author: William H. Armstrong
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2007 [EBook #23565]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED-TAPE AND PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ RED-TAPE
+
+ AND
+
+ PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS:
+
+ AS SEEN FROM THE RANKS
+
+ DURING A
+
+ +Campaign in the Army of the Potomac+.
+
+
+ BY
+
+ A CITIZEN-SOLDIER.
+
+ "We must be brief when Traitors brave the Field."
+
+
+ NEW YORK:
+
+ _Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway._
+
+ M DCCC LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+ Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
+
+ GEO. W. CARLETON,
+
+ In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
+ the Southern District of New York.
+
+
+ R. CRAIGHEAD,
+
+ Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper
+
+ +Carton Building+,
+
+ _81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+"Greek-fire has shivered the statue of John C. Calhoun in the streets of
+the City of Charleston,"--so the papers say. Whether true or not, the
+Greek-fire of the righteous indignation of a loyal people is fast
+shattering the offspring of his infamous teachings,--the armed treason
+of the South, and its more cowardly ally the insidious treachery that
+lurks under doubtful cover in the loyal States. In thunder tones do the
+masses declare, that now and for ever, they repudiate the Treason and
+despise the Traitor. Nobly are the hands of our Honest President
+sustained in prosecuting this most righteous war.
+
+In a day like this, the least that can be expected of any citizen
+is--duty. We are all co-partners in our beneficent government. We should
+be co-laborers for her defence. Jealous of the interests of her brave
+soldiery; for they are our own. Proud of their noble deeds; they
+constitute our National Heritage.
+
+If these campaign sketches, gathered in actual service during 1862-3,
+and grouped during the spare hours of convalescence from a camp fever,
+correct one of the least of the abuses in our military machinery--if
+they lighten the toil of the humblest of our soldiers, or nerve anew the
+resolves of loyalty tempted to despair, the writer will have no reason
+to complain of labor lost. Great latitude of excuse for the existence of
+abuses must be allowed, when we consider the suddenness with which our
+volunteers sprang into ranks at the outset of the Rebellion. Now that
+the warfare is a system, there is less reason for their continuance.
+Reformers must, however, remember, that to keep our citizen-soldiery
+effective, they must not make too much of the citizen and too little of
+the soldier. Abuses must be corrected under the laws; but to be
+corrected at all they must first be exposed.
+
+Drunkenness, half-heartedness, and senseless routine, have done much to
+cripple the patriotic efforts of our people. The patriotism of the man
+who at this day doubts the policy of their open reproof can well be
+questioned. West Point has, in too many instances, nursed imbecility and
+treason; but in our honest contempt for the small men of whom, in common
+with other institutions, she has had her share,--we must not ignore
+those bright pages of our history adorned with the skill and heroism of
+her nobler sons. McClellanism did not follow its chief from Warrenton;
+or Burnside's earnestness, Hooker's dash, and Meade's soldierly stand at
+Gettysburg, backed as they were by the heroic fighting of the Army of
+the Potomac, would have had, as they deserved, more decisive results.
+
+The Young Men of the Land would the writer address in the following
+pages--"because they are strong," and in their strength is the nation's
+hope. In certain prospect of victory over the greatest enemy we have yet
+had as a nation--the present infamous rebellion--we can well await
+patiently the correction of minor evils.
+
+          "Meanwhile we'll sacrifice to liberty,
+          Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,
+          The generous plan of power delivered down
+          From age to age by your renowned forefathers,
+          (So dearly bought, the price of so much blood;)
+          Oh, let it never perish in your hands!
+          But piously transmit it to your children.
+          Do thou, great liberty! inspire our souls,
+          And make our lives in thy possession happy.
+          Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence."
+
+February, 1864.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I.                                                             PAGE
+
+The Advent of our General of Division--Camp near Frederick City,
+Maryland--The Old Revolutionary Barracks at Frederick--An Irish
+Corporal's Recollections of the First Regiment of Volunteers from
+Pennsylvania--Punishment in the Old First,                                9
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Treason at Harper's Ferry--Rebel Occupation of Frederick--Patriotism
+of the Ladies of Frederick--A Rebel Guard nonplussed by a Lady--The
+Approach to Antietam--Our Brigadier cuts Red-Tape--THE BLUNDER OF THE
+DAY AFTER ANTIETAM--The Little Irish Corporal's idea of Strategy,        15
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The March to the River--Our Citizen Soldiery--Popularity of Commanders,
+how Lost and how Won--The Rebel Dead--How the Rebels repay Courtesy,     27
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A Regimental Baker--Hot Pies--Position of the Baker in line of
+Battle--Troubles of the Baker--A Western Virginia Captain on a Whiskey
+Scent--The Baker's Story--How to obtain Political Influence--Dancing
+Attendance at Washington--What Simon says--Confiscation of Whiskey,      33
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Scene at the Surgeon's Quarters--Our Little Dutch Doctor--Incidents
+of his Practice--His Messmate the Chaplain--The Western Virginia
+Captain's account of a Western Virginia Chaplain--His Solitary Oath--How
+he Preached, how he Prayed, and how he Bush-whacked--His Revenge of
+Snowden's Death--How the little Dutch Doctor applied the Captain's
+Story,                                                                   47
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A Day at Division Head-Quarters--The Judge Advocate--The tweedle-dum and
+tweedle-dee of Red-Tape as understood by Pigeon-hole Generals--Red Tape
+Reveries--French Authorities on Pigeon-hole Investigations--An
+Obstreperous Court and Pigeon-hole Strictures--Disgusting Head-Quarter
+Profanity,                                                               59
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac--Fitz John's Rail Order--Rails for
+Corps Head-Quarters _versus_ Rails for Hospitals--The Western Virginia
+Captain--Old Rosy, and How to Silence Secesh Women--The Old Woman's
+Fixin's--The Captain's Orderly,                                          70
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The Reconnoissance--Shepherdstown--Punch and Patriotism--Private Tom on
+West Point and Southern Sympathy--The Little Irish Corporal on John
+Mitchell--A Skirmish--Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and
+Chaplain--Battle of Falling Waters not intended--Story of the Little
+Irish Corporal--Patterson's Folly, or Treason,                           83
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Reconnoissance concluded--What we Saw and What we didn't See, and what
+the Good Public Read--Pigeon-hole Generalship and the Press--The
+Preacher Lieutenant and how he Recruited--Comparative Merits of Black
+Union Men and White Rebels--A Ground Blast, and its effect upon a
+Pigeon-hole General--Staff Officers Striking a Snag in the Western
+Virginia Captain--Why the People have a right to expect Active Army
+Movements--Red Tape and the Sick List--Pigeon-holing at Division
+Head-quarters,                                                          100
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Departure from Sharpsburg Camp--The Old Woman of Sandy Hook--Harper's
+Ferry--South sewing Dragon's Teeth by shedding Old John's Blood--The
+Dutch Doctor and the Boar--Beauties of Tobacco--Camp Life on the
+Character--Patrick, Brother to the Little Corporal--General Patterson no
+Irishman--Guarding a Potato Patch in Dixie--The Preacher Lieutenant on
+Emancipation--Inspection and the Exhorting Colonel--The Scotch Tailor on
+Military Matters,                                                       116
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Snicker's Gap--Private Harry on the "Anaconda"--Not inclined to turn
+Boot-Black--"Oh! why did you go for a Soldier?"--The
+ex-News-Boy--Pigeon-hole Generalship on the March--The Valley of the
+Shenandoah--A Flesh Carnival--The Dutch Doctor on a Horse-dicker--An Old
+Rebel, and how he parted with his Apple-Brandy--Toasting the
+"Union"--Spruce Retreats,                                               137
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The March to Warrenton--Secesh Sympathy and Quarter-Master's
+Receipts--Middle-Borough--The Venerable Uncle Ned and his Story of the
+Captain of the Tigers--The Adjutant on Strategy--Red Tapism and
+Mac-Napoleonism--Movement Stopped--Division Head-Quarters out of
+Whiskey--Stragglers and Marauders--A Summary Proceeding--Persimmons and
+Picket-Duty--A Rebellious Pig--McClellanism,                            160
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Camp near Warrenton--Stability of the Republic--Measures, not Men,
+regarded by the Public--Removal of McClellan--Division Head-Quarters a
+House of Mourning--A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point
+Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box--Head-Quarter Murmuring and
+Mutterings--Departure of Little Mac and the Prince--Cheering by Word of
+Command--The Southern Saratoga--Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure,  178
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A Skulker and the Dutch Doctor--A Review of the Corps by Old Joe--A
+Change of Base; what it means to the Soldier, and what to the
+Public--Our Quarter-Master and General Hooker--The Movement by the Left
+Flank--A Division General and Dog driving--The Desolation of Virginia--A
+Rebel Land-Owner and the Quarter-Master--"No Hoss, Sir!"--The Poetical
+Lieutenant unappreciated--Mutton or Dog?--Desk Drudgery and Senseless
+Routine,                                                                193
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Red-Tape and the Soldier's Widow--Pigeon-holing at Head-Quarters and
+Weeping at the Family Fireside--A Pigeon-hole General Outwitted--Fishing
+for a Discharge--The Little Irish Corporal on Topographical
+Engineers--Guard Duty over a Whiskey Barrel,                            210
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The Battle of Fredericksburg--Screwing Courage up to the Sticking
+Point--Consolations of a Flask--Pigeon-hole Nervousness--Abandonment of
+Knapsacks--Incidents before, during, and after the Fight,               225
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Sorrows of the Sutler--The Sutler's Tent--Generals manufactured by
+the Dailies--Fighting and Writing--A Glandered
+Horse--Courts-martial--Mania of a Pigeon-hole General on the
+Subject--Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel in Strait-Jackets,              247
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Dress Coats _versus_ Blouses--Military Law--Bill the
+Cook--Courts-Martial--Important Decision in Military Law--A Man with Two
+Blouses on, can be compelled to put a Dress Coat on top--A Colored
+French Cook and a Beefy-browed Judge-Advocate--The Mud March--No
+Pigeon-holing on a Whiskey Scent--Old Joe in Command--Dissolution of
+Partnership between the Dutch Doctor and the Chaplain,                  264
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The Presentation Mania--The Western Virginia Captain in the War
+Department--Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton--Capture of the Dutch
+Doctor--A Genuine Newspaper Sell,                                       283
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The Army again on the Move--Pack Mules and Wagon Trains--A Negro
+Prophetess--The Wilderness--Hooped Skirts and Black Jack--The Five Days'
+Fight at Chancellorsville--Terrible Death of an Aged Slave--A
+Pigeon-hole General's "Power in Reserve,"                               295
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The Pigeon-hole General and his Adjutant, under Charges--The Exhorting
+Colonel's Adieu to the Sunday Fight at Chancellorsville; Reasons
+thereof--Speech of the Dutch Doctor in Reply to a Peace-Offering from
+the Chaplain--The Irish Corporal stumping for Freedom--Black Charlie's
+Compliments to his Master--Western Virginia at the Head of a Black
+Regiment,                                                               313
+
+
+
+
+RED-TAPE
+
+AND
+
+PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_The Advent of our General of Division--Camp near Frederick City,
+Maryland--The Old Revolutionary Barracks at Frederick--An Irish
+Corporal's Recollections of the First Regiment of Volunteers from
+Pennsylvania--Punishment in the Old First._
+
+
+"Our new Division-General, boys!" exclaimed a sergeant of the 210th
+Pennsylvania Volunteers, whose attention and head were turned at the
+clatter of horses' hoofs to the rear. "I heard an officer say that he
+would be along to-day, and I recognise his description."
+
+The men, although weary and route-worn, straightened up, dressed their
+ranks, and as the General and Staff rode past, some enthusiastic soldier
+proposed cheers for our new Commander. They started with a will, but the
+General's doubtful look, as interpreted by the men, gave little or no
+encouragement, and the effort ended in a few ragged discordant yells.
+
+"He is a strange-looking old covey any how," said one of the boys in an
+undertone. "Did you notice that red muffler about his neck, and how
+pinched up and crooked his hat is, and that odd-looking moustache, and
+how savagely he cocks his eyes through his spectacles?"
+
+"They say," replied the sergeant, "that we are the first troops that he
+has commanded. He was a staff officer before in the Topographical Corps.
+Didn't you notice the T.C. on his coat buttons?"
+
+"And is he going to practise upon us?" blurts out a bustling red-faced
+little Irish corporal. "Be Jabers, that accounts for the crooked cow
+road we have marched through the last day--miles out of the way, and
+niver a chance for coffee."
+
+"You are too fast, Terence," said the sergeant; "if he belongs to the
+Topographical Corps, he ought at least to know the roads."
+
+"And didn't you say not two hours ago that we were entirely out of the
+way, and that we had been wandering as crooked as the creek that flows
+back of the old town we are from, and nearly runs through itself in a
+dozen places?"
+
+The sergeant admitted that he had said so, but stated that perhaps the
+General was not to blame, and added somewhat jocosely: "At any rate the
+winding of the creek makes those beautiful walks we have so much enjoyed
+in summer evenings."
+
+"Beautiful winding walks! is it, sergeant! Shure and whin you have your
+forty pound wait upon your back, forty rounds of lead and powdher in
+your cartridge-box, and twenty more in your pocket, three days' rations
+in your haversack, a musket on your shoulder, and army brogans on your
+throtters, you are just about the first man that I know of to take
+straight cuts."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a close warm day near the middle of September. The roads were
+dusty and the troops exhausted. Two days previously the brigade to which
+they belonged had left the pleasantest of camps, called "Camp Whipple"
+in honor of their former and favorite Division Commander. Situated in an
+orchard on the level brow of a hill that overlooked Washington, the
+imposing Capitol, the broad expanse of the Potomac dotted with frequent
+craft, the many national buildings, and scenery of historic interest,
+the men left it with regret, but carried with them recollections that
+often in times of future depression revived their patriotic ardor.
+
+Over dusty roads, through the muddy aqueduct of the Chesapeake and Ohio
+Canal, hurried on over the roughly paved streets of Georgetown, and
+through the suburbs of Washington, they finally halted for the night,
+and, as it chanced through lack of orders, for the succeeding day also,
+near Meridian Hill. Under orders to join the Fifth Army Corps commanded
+by Major-General Fitz John Porter, to which the Division had been
+previously assigned, the march was resumed on the succeeding day, which
+happened to be Sunday, and in the afternoon of which our chapter opens.
+
+A march of another day brought the Brigade to a recent Rebel camp
+ground. Traces of their occupancy were found not only in their
+depredations in the neighborhood destructive of railroad bridges, but
+also in letters and wall-paper envelopes adorned with the lantern-jawed
+phiz of Jefferson Davis. The latter were sought after with avidity as
+soon as ranks were broken and tents pitched; the more eagerly perhaps
+for the reason that during the greater part of their previous month of
+service they had been frequently within sound of rebel cannon, although
+but once under their fire. During the previous day, in fact, they had
+marched to the music of the artillery of South Mountain.
+
+That night awakened lively recollections in the mind of Terence McCarty,
+our lively little Irish corporal. His duty for the time as corporal of a
+relief gave him ample opportunity to indulge them. He had belonged to
+the old First Pennsylvania Regiment of three months men, that a little
+over a year before, when Maryland was halting between loyalty and
+disloyalty, had spent its happiest week of service in the yard of the
+revolutionary barracks in the city of Frederick. Terence was but two
+short miles from the spot. Brimfull of the memories, he turned to a
+comrade, who had also belonged to the First, and who with others chanced
+to stand near.
+
+"I say, Jack! Do you recollect the ould First and Frederick, and do you
+know that we are but two miles and short ones at that from the blissed
+ould white-washed barracks, full of all kind of quare guns and canteens
+looking like barrels cut down; and the Parade Ground where our ould
+Colonel used to come his 'Briskly, men! Briskly,' when he'd put us
+through the manual, and where so many ladies would come to see our
+ivolutions, and where they set the big table for us on the Fourth, and
+where--"
+
+"Hold on, corporal! you can't give that week's history to-night."
+
+"I was only going to obsarve, Jack, that I feel like a badly used man."
+
+"How so, Terence?"
+
+"Why you see nearly ivery officer, commissioned and non-commissioned, of
+the ould First has been promoted. The Colonel was too ould for service,
+or my head on it, he would have had a star. Just look at the captains
+by way of sample--Company A, a Lieutenant-Colonel, expecting and
+desarving an eagle ivery day; Company B, a Lieutenant-Colonel; Company
+C, our own Lieutenant-Colonel; Company D, a Brigadier for soldierly
+looks, daring, and dash; Company E, a Captain in an aisy berth in the
+regular service; Company F, a Colonel; Company G, a Major; Company H, a
+Lieutenant-Colonel; Company I, I have lost sight of, and the
+lion-hearted captain of Company K, doing a lion's share of work at the
+head of a regiment in Tennessee. Now, Jack, the under officers and many
+privates run pretty much the same way, but not quite as high. Bad luck
+to me, I was fifth corporal thin and am eighth now--promoted
+crab-fashion. Fortune's wheel gives me many a turn, Jack! but always
+stops with me on the lower side."
+
+"I saw you on the upper side once," retorted Jack roguishly.
+
+"And whin? may I ask."
+
+"When, do you say? why, when you took about half a canteen too much, and
+that same old colonel had you tied on the upper side of a barrel on the
+green in front of the barracks."
+
+"Bad luck to an ill-natured memory, Jack, for stirring that up," replied
+the corporal, breaking in upon the laughter that followed, "but I now
+recollect, it was the day before you slipped the guard whin the colonel
+gave you a barrel uniform with your head through the end, and kept me
+for two mortal long hours in the hot sun, a tickling of you under the
+nose with a straw, and daubing molasses on your chaps to plaze the
+flies, to the great admiration of a big crowd of ladies and gentlemen."
+
+Jack subsided, and the hearty laughter at the corporal's ready retort
+was broken a few minutes later by a loud call for the corporal of the
+guard, which hurried Terence away, dispersed the crowd, and might as
+well end this chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_The Treason at Harper's Ferry--Rebel Occupation of
+Frederick--Patriotism of the Ladies of Frederick--A Rebel Guard
+nonplussed by a Lady--The Approach to Antietam--Our Brigadier cuts Red
+Tape--The Blunder of the day after Antietam--The little Irish Corporal's
+idea of Strategy._
+
+
+The Brigade did not rest long in its new camp. The day and a half,
+however, passed there had many incidents to be remembered by. Fish were
+caught in abundance from the beautiful Monocacy. But the most impressive
+scene was the long procession of disarmed, dejected men, who had been
+basely surrendered at Harper's Ferry, and were now on their way
+homeward, on parole. Many and deep were the curses they uttered against
+their late commanders. "Boys, _we've_ been sold! Look out," cried a
+comely bright-eyed young officer of eighteen or thereabouts. "That we
+have," added a chaplain, who literally bore the cross upon his shoulders
+in a pair of elegant straps. When will earnest men cease to be foiled in
+this war by treacherous commanders? was an inquiry that pressed itself
+anxiously home.
+
+But the thunders of Antietam were reverberating through that mountainous
+region, distinctly heard in all their many echoes, and of course the
+all-absorbing topic. At 3 P. M. orders came to move a short distance
+beyond Frederick. The division was rapidly formed, and the men marched
+joyously along through the streets of Frederick, already crowded with
+our own and Rebel wounded, to the sound of lively martial music; but
+none more joyously than the members of the old First, whose
+recollections were brisk of good living as they recognised in many a
+lady a former benefactress. Bradley T. Johnson's race, that commenced
+with his infamously prepared and lying handbills, was soon run in
+Frederick. No one of the border cities has been more undoubtedly or
+devotedly patriotic. Its prominent ministers at an early day took bold
+positions. The ladies were not behind, and many a sick and wounded
+soldier will bless them to his latest hour. The world has heard of the
+well deserved fame of Florence Nightingale. History will hold up to a
+nation's gratitude thousands of such ministering angels, who, moving in
+humbler circles, perhaps, are none the less entitled to a nation's
+praise. "Great will be their reward."
+
+To show the spirit that emboldened the ladies of Frederick, a notable
+instance is related as having occurred during the Rebel occupation of
+the city under General Stuart. Many Union ladies had left the place. Not
+so, however, with Mrs. D., the lively, witty, and accomplished wife of a
+prominent Lutheran minister. The Union sick and wounded that remained
+demanded attention, and for their sake, as well as from her own high
+spirit, she resolved to stay. Miss Annie C., the beautiful and talented
+daughter of Ex-U. S. Senator C., an intimate friend of Mrs. D., through
+like devotion, also remained. Rebel officers, gorgeous in grey and gilt
+lace, many of them old residents of the place, strutted about the
+streets. The ragged privates begged from door to door. Mrs. D., and her
+friend had been separated several days--a long period considering their
+close intimacy and their present surroundings. Mrs. D. resolved to visit
+her, and with her to resolve was to execute. Threading her way through
+the crowded streets, heeding not the jeers or insults of the rebel
+soldiery, she soon came in front of the Cooper Mansion, to find a rebel
+flag floating from an upper window, and a well dressed soldierly looking
+greyback, with bayonet fixed, pacing his beat in front. Nothing daunted,
+Mrs. D. approached. "Halt," was the short sharp hail of the sentinel, as
+he brought his bayonet to the charge. "Who is quartered here?" asked
+Mrs. D., gradually nearing the sentry. "Maj.-Gen. Stuart," was the brief
+reply, "I want to visit a lady acquaintance in the house." "My orders
+are strict, madam, that no one can cross my beat without a pass." "_Pass
+or no pass, I must and will go into that house_," and quick as thought
+this frail lady dashed aside the bayonet, sprang across the beat, and
+entered the hall, while the sentry confused, uncertain whether he should
+follow or not, stood a minute or two before resuming his step. From an
+upper window Gen. Stuart laughed heartily at the scene, and was loud in
+praise of her tact and pluck.
+
+But all this time our division has been moving through the streets of
+Frederick, in fact has reached what was to have been its camping ground
+for the night. The reader will excuse me; older heads and more exact
+pens have frequently, when ladies intervened, made much longer
+digressions.
+
+The halt was but for a moment. An aide-de-camp, weary-looking, on a
+horse covered with foam, dashed up to the division commander, bearing an
+order from the commander-in-chief that the division must join its corps
+at Antietam without delay. The fight might be renewed in the morning,
+and if so, fresh troops were needed. The order was communicated through
+the brigade commanders to commanders of regiments, while the subordinate
+field officers went from company to company encouraging the men, telling
+them that a glorious victory had been gained, that the rebels were
+hemmed in by the river on three sides, and our army in front; that there
+was but one ford, and that a poor one, and that the rebels must either
+take to the river indiscriminately, be cut to pieces, or surrender. In
+short, that we had them.
+
+These statements were received with the most enthusiastic applause. As
+the Division proceeded on its march, they were confirmed by reports of
+spectators and wounded men in ambulances. What was the most significant
+fact to the men who had seen the thousands of stragglers and skulkers
+from the second battle of Bull Run, was the entire absence of straggling
+or demoralization of any kind. Our troops must have been victorious, was
+the ready and natural suggestion. The thought nerved them, and pushing
+up their knapsacks, and hitching up their pantaloons, they trudged with
+a will up the mountain slope.
+
+That mountain slope!--it would well repay a visit from one of our large
+cities, to descend that mountain a bright summer afternoon. A sudden
+turn in the road brings to view the sun-gilded spires of the city of
+Frederick, rising as if by enchantment from one of the loveliest of
+valleys. Many of the descriptions of foreign scenery pale before the
+realities of this view. When will our Hawthornes and our Taylors be just
+to the land of their birth?
+
+Scenery on that misty night could not delay the troops. The mountain-top
+was gained. About half way down the northern slope of the mountain the
+Division halted to obtain the benefits of a spring fifty yards from the
+road. A steep path led to it, and one by one the men filed down to fill
+their canteens. The delay was terribly tedious, and entirely
+unnecessary, as five minutes' inquiry among the men, many of whom were
+familiar with the road, would have informed the Commanding General of
+abundance of excellent water, a short mile beyond, and close by the
+wayside. Pride, which prevails to an unwarranted extent among too many
+regular officers, is frequently the cause of much vexation. Inquiry and
+exertion to lighten the labors of our brave volunteers would, with every
+earnest officer, be unceasing. A short distance further a halt was
+ordered for coffee, that "sublime beverage of Mocha," indispensable in
+camp or in the field. Strange to say, our brigadier, who habitually
+confined himself closely to cold water, was one of the most particular
+of officers in ordering halts for coffee.
+
+South Mountain was crossed, but in the dusky light little could be seen
+of the devastation caused by the late battle. "Yonder," said a wounded
+man who chanced to be passing, "our gallant General lost his life." The
+brave, accomplished Reno! How dearly our national integrity is
+maintained! Brave spirit, in your life you thought it well worth the
+cost; your death can never be considered a vain sacrifice!
+
+Boonsboro' was entered about day-break. The road to Sharpsburg was here
+taken, and at 7-1/2 A. M., having marched during that night twenty-eight
+miles, the Division stood at arms near the battle-ground along a road
+crowded with ammunition trains. Inquiry was made as to the ammunition,
+and the number of rounds for each man ordered to be increased
+immediately from forty to sixty.
+
+"Pioneer! hand me that axe," said our brigadier, dismounting.
+"Sergeant," addressing the sergeant of the ammunition guard, "hand out
+those boxes." "The Division General has given strict orders, if you
+please, General, that the boxes must pass regularly through the hands of
+the ordnance officer," said the sergeant, saluting. "I am _acting_
+ordnance officer; hand out the boxes!" was the command, that from its
+tone and manner brooked no delay. A box was at his feet. In an instant a
+clever blow from the muscular arm of the hero of Winchester laid it
+open. Another and another, until the orderly sergeant had given the
+required number of rounds to every man in the brigade. "Attention!
+Column! Shoulder Arms! Right Face! Right Shoulder Shift Arms!" and at a
+quickstep the brigade moved towards the field.
+
+After passing long trains of ambulances and ammunition wagons, the boys
+were saluted as they passed through the little town of Keetysville by
+exhortations from the wounded, who crowded every house, and forgot their
+wounds in their enthusiasm. "Fellows, you've got 'em! Give 'em h--l!"
+yelled an artillery sergeant, for whom a flesh wound in the arm was
+being dressed at the window by a kind-hearted looking country woman.
+"Give it to 'em!" "They're fast!" "This good lady knows every foot of
+the ground, and says so." The good lady smiled assent, and was saluted
+with cheer upon cheer. Dead horses, a few unburied men, marks of shot in
+the buildings, now told of immediate proximity to the field. A short
+distance further, and the Division was drawn up in line of battle,
+behind one of the singular ridges that mark this memorable ground.
+Fragments of shells, haversacks, knapsacks, and the like, told how hotly
+the ground had been contested on the previous day. The order to load
+was quickly obeyed, and the troops, with the remainder of the Fifth
+Corps in their immediate neighborhood, stood to arms.
+
+A large number of officers lined the crest of the ridge, and thither,
+with leave, the Colonel and Lieut.-Colonel of the 210th repaired. The
+scene that met their view was grand beyond description. Another somewhat
+higher and more uniform ridge, running almost parallel to the ridge or
+rather connected series of ridges on one of which the officers stood,
+was the strong position held by the rebels on the previous day. Between
+the ridges flowed the sluggish Antietam, dammed up for milling purposes.
+Beyond, on the crest of the hill, gradually giving way, were the rebel
+skirmishers; our own were as gradually creeping up the slope. The
+skirmishers were well deployed upon both sides; and the parallel flashes
+and continuous rattle of their rifles gave an interest to the scene,
+ineffaceable in the minds of spectators.
+
+"Do you hear that shell, you can see the smoke just this side of
+Sharpsburg on our left," said the Colonel, addressing his companion.
+"There it bursts," and a puff of white smoke expanded itself in the air
+fifty yards above one of our batteries posted on a ridge on the left.
+Two pieces gave quick reply. "Officers, to your posts," shouted an
+aide-de-camp, and forthwith the officers galloped to their respective
+commands.
+
+"Boys, the ball is about to open, put your best foot foremost," said the
+Colonel to his regiment. The men, excited, supposing themselves about to
+pass their first ordeal of battle, straightened up, held their pieces
+with tightened grips, and nervously awaited the "forward." Beyond the
+sharp crack of the rifles, however, no further sound was heard. Hour
+after hour passed. At length an aide from the staff of the Division
+General cantered to where the Brigadier, conversing with several of his
+field officers, stood, and informed him that it was the pleasure of the
+Division General that the men should be made comfortable, _as no
+immediate attack was apprehended_. "No immediate attack apprehended!"
+echoed the Colonel. "Of course not. Why don't we attack them?"
+
+The aide flushed, said somewhat excitedly: "That was the order I
+received, sir."
+
+"Boys, cook your coffee," said our Brigadier, somewhat mechanically--a
+brown study pictured in his face.
+
+The field officers scattered to relieve their hunger, or rather their
+anxiety as to the programme of the day.
+
+"Charlie," said the Lieut.-Col., addressing a good-humored looking
+Contraband, "get our coffee ready."
+
+The Colonel, with the other field and staff officers, seated themselves
+upon knapsacks unslung for their accommodation, silently, each
+apparently waiting upon the other to open the conversation. In the
+meantime several company officers who had heard of the order gathered
+about them.
+
+"I don't understand this move at all," at length said the Colonel
+nervously. "Here we are, with a reserve of thirty thousand men who have
+not been in the fight at all, with ammunition untouched, perfectly fresh
+and eager for the move. The troops that were engaged yesterday have for
+the most part had a good night's rest and are ready and anxious for a
+brush to-day. The rebels, hemmed in on three sides by the river--with a
+miserable ford, and that only in one place, as every body knows, and as
+there is no earthly excuse for our generals not knowing, as this ground
+was canvassed often enough in the three months' service. Why don't we
+advance?" continued the Colonel, rising. "Their sharpshooters are near
+the woods now, and when they reach it, they'll run like Devils. Why
+don't we advance? We can drive them into the river, if they like that
+better than being shelled; or they can surrender, which they would
+prefer to either. And as to force, I'll bet we have one third more."
+
+The Colonel, an impressive, fine-looking man, six feet clear in his
+socks, of thirty-eight or thereabouts, delivered the above with more
+than his usual earnestness.
+
+The Adjutant, of old Berks by birth, rather short in stature, thick-set,
+with a mathematically developed head, was the first to rejoin.
+
+"It can't be for want of ammunition, Colonel! This corps has plenty. An
+officer in a corps engaged yesterday told me that they had enough, and
+you all saw the hundreds of loaded ammunition wagons that we passed in
+the road close at hand--and besides, what excuse can there be? The Rebs
+I understand did not get much available ammunition at the ferry. They
+are far from their base of supplies, while we are scant fifteen miles
+from one railroad, and twenty-eight from another, and good roads to
+both."
+
+"Be easy," said the Major, a fine specimen of manhood, six feet two and
+a half clear of his boots, an Irishman by birth, the brogue, however, if
+he ever had any, lost by an early residence in this country. "Be easy.
+Little Mac is a safe commander. We tried him, Colonel, in the Peninsula,
+and I'll wager my pay and allowances, and God knows I need them, that
+he'll have his army safe."
+
+"Yes, and the Rebel army too," snappishly interrupted the Colonel.
+
+"I have always thought," said the Lieut.-Col., "that the test of a great
+commander was his ability to follow up and take advantage of a victory.
+One thousand men from the ranks would bear that test triumphantly
+to-day. It is a wonder that our Union men stiffened in yesterday's
+fight, whose blue jackets we can see from yonder summit in the rear of
+our sharpshooters, do not rise from the dead, and curse the halting
+imbecility that is making their heroic struggles, and glorious deaths,
+seemingly vain sacrifices."
+
+"Too hard, Colonel, too hard," says the Major.
+
+"Too hard! when results are developing before our eyes, so that every
+servant, even, in the regiment can read them. Mark my word for it,
+Major; Lee commenced crossing last evening, and by the time we creep to
+the river at five hundred yards a day, if at all, indeed, he will have
+his army over, horse, foot, and dragoons, and leave us the muskets on
+the field, the dead to bury, farm-houses full of Rebel wounded to take
+care of, and the battle-ground to encamp upon--a victory barely worth
+the cost. Why not advance, as the Col. says. The worst they can do in
+any event is to put us upon the defensive, and they can't drive us from
+this ground."
+
+"If old Rosecranz was only here," sang out a Captain, who had been
+itching for his say, and who had seen service in Western Virginia, "he
+wouldn't let them pull their pantaloons and shirts off and swim across,
+or wade it as if they were going out a bobbing for eels. When I was in
+Western Virginia----"
+
+"If fighting old Joe Hooker could only take his saddle to-day," chimed
+in an enthusiastic company officer, completely cutting off the Captain,
+"he'd go in on his own hook."
+
+"And it would be," sang out a beardless and thoughtless Lieutenant--
+
+          "Old Joe, kicking up ahind and afore
+          And the Butternuts a caving in, around old Joe."
+
+The apt old song might have given the Lieutenant a little credit at any
+other time, but the matter in hand was too provokingly serious. Coffee
+and crackers were announced, the field officers commenced their meal in
+silence, and the company officers returned to their respective quarters.
+
+The troops rested on their arms all that afternoon, at times lounging
+close to the stacks. Upon the face of every reflecting officer and
+private, deep mortification was depicted. It did not compare, however,
+with the chagrin manifested by the Volunteer Regiments who had been
+engaged in the fight, and whose thinned ranks and comrades lost made
+them closely calculate consequences. Not last among the reflecting class
+was our little Irish corporal.
+
+"Gineral," said he, advancing cap in hand, to our always accessible
+Brigadier, as he sat leisurely upon his bay--"Gineral! will you permit a
+corporal, and an Irishman at that, to spake a word to ye?"
+
+"Certainly, corporal!" the fine open countenance of the General relaxing
+into a smile.
+
+"Gineral! didn't we beat the Rebs yesterday?"
+
+"So they say, corporal."
+
+"Don't the river surround them, and can they cross at more than one
+place, and that a bad one, as an ould woman whose pig I saved to-day
+tould me?"
+
+"The river is on their three sides, and they have only one ford, and
+that a bad one, corporal."
+
+"Thin why the Divil don't we charge?"
+
+"Corporal!" said the General, laughing, "I am not in command of the
+army, and can't say."
+
+"Bad luck to our stars that ye aren't, Gineral! there would be somebody
+hurt to-day thin, and it would be the bluidy Butthernuts, I'm thinking."
+The corporal gave this ready compliment as only an Irishman can, and
+withdrew.
+
+At dusk orders were received for the men to sleep by their arms. But
+there was no sleep to many an eye until a late hour that night. Never
+while life lasts will survivors forget the exciting conversations of
+that day and night. "Tired nature," however, claimed her dues, and one
+by one, officers and privates at late hours betook themselves to their
+blankets. The stars, undisturbed by struggles on this little planet,
+were gazed at by many a wakeful eye. Those same stars will look down as
+placidly upon the future faithful historian, whose duty it will be to
+place first in the list of cold, costly military mistakes, the blunder
+of the day after the battle of Antietam.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+_The March to the River--Our Citizen Soldiery--Popularity of Commanders
+how Lost and how Won--The Rebel Dead--How the Rebels repay Courtesy._
+
+
+An early call to arms was sounded upon the succeeding morning, and the
+Division rapidly formed. The batteries that had been posted at
+commanding points upon the series of ridges during the previous day and
+night were withdrawn, and the whole Corps moved along a narrow road,
+that wound beautifully among the ridges.
+
+The Volunteer Regiments were unusually quiet; the thoughts of the night
+previous evidently lingered with them. The American Volunteer is no mere
+machine. Rigorous discipline will give him soldierly
+characteristics--teach him that unity of action with his comrades and
+implicit obedience of orders are essential to success. But his
+independence of thought remains; he never forgets that he is a citizen
+soldier; he reads and reflects for himself. Few observant officers of
+volunteers but have noticed that affairs of national polity, movements
+of military commanders, are not unfrequently discussed by men in
+blouses, about camp fires and picket stations, with as much practical
+ability and certainly quite as courteously, as in halls where
+legislators canvass them at a nation's cost. It has been justly
+remarked that in no army in the world is the average standard of
+intelligence so high, as in the American volunteer force. The same
+observation might be extended to earnestness of purpose and honesty of
+intention. The doctrine has long since been exploded that scoundrels
+make the best soldiers. Men of no character under discipline will fight,
+but they fight mechanically. The determination so necessary to success
+is wanting. European serfs trained with the precision of puppets, and
+like puppets unthinking, are wanting in the dash that characterizes our
+volunteers. That creature of impulse the Frenchman, under all that is
+left of the first Napoleon, the shadow of a mighty name, will charge
+with desperation, but fails in the cool and quiet courage so essential
+in seeming forlorn resistance. In what other nation can you combine the
+elements of the American volunteer? It may be said that the British
+Volunteer Rifle Corps would prove a force of similar character. In many
+respects undoubtedly they would; as yet there is no basis of comparison.
+Their soldierly attainments have not been tested by the realities of
+war.
+
+There was ample food for reflection. On the neighboring hills heavy
+details of soldiers were gathering the rebel dead in piles preparatory
+to committing them to the trenches, at which details equally heavy,
+vigorously plied the pick and spade. Our own dead, with few exceptions,
+had already been buried; and the long rows of graves marked by head and
+foot boards, placed by the kind hands of comrades, attested but too
+sadly how heavily we had peopled the ridges.
+
+While the troops were _en route_, the Commander-in-Chief in his hack and
+four, followed by a staff imposing in numbers, passed. The Regulars
+cheered vociferously. The applause from the Volunteers was brief,
+faint, and a most uncertain sound, and yet many of these same Volunteer
+Regiments were rapturous in applause, previous to and during the battle.
+Attachment to Commanders so customary among old troops--so desirable in
+strengthening the morale of the army--cannot blind the intelligent
+soldier to a grave mistake--a mistake that makes individual effort
+contemptible. True, a great European Commander has said that soldiers
+will become attached to any General; a remark true of the times
+perhaps--true of the troops of that day,--but far from being true of
+volunteers, who are in the field from what they consider the necessity
+of the country, and whose souls are bent upon a speedy, honorable, and
+victorious termination of the war.
+
+A glance at the manner in which our Volunteer Regiments are most
+frequently formed, will, perhaps, best illustrate this. A town meeting
+is called, speeches made appealing to the patriotic, to respond to the
+necessities of the country; lists opened and the names of mechanics,
+young attorneys, clerks, merchants, farmers' sons, dry-goods-men and
+their clerks, and others of different pursuits, follow each other in
+strange succession, but with like earnestness of purpose. An intelligent
+soldiery gathered in this way, will not let attachments to men blind
+them as to the effects of measures.
+
+About 10 A. M., our brigade was drawn up in line of battle on a ridge
+overlooking the well riddled little town of Sharpsburg. Arms were
+stacked, and privilege given many officers and men to examine the
+adjacent ground. A cornfield upon our right, along which upon the north
+side ran a narrow farm road, that long use had sunk to a level of two
+and in most places three feet, below the surface of the fields, had been
+contested with unusual fierceness. Blue and grey lay literally with
+arms entwined as they fell in hand to hand contest. The fence rails had
+been piled upon the north side of the road, and in the rifle pit formed
+to their hand with this additional bulwark, they poured the most galling
+of fires with comparative impunity upon our troops advancing to the
+charge. A Union battery, however, came to the rescue, and an enfilading
+fire of but a few moments made havoc unparalleled. Along the whole line
+of rebel occupation, their bodies could have been walked upon, so
+closely did they lie. Pale-faced, finely featured boys of sixteen, their
+delicate hands showing no signs of toil, hurried by a misguided
+enthusiasm from fond friends and luxurious family firesides, contrasted
+strangely with the long black hair, lank looks of the Louisiana Tiger,
+or the rough, bloated, and bearded face of the Backwoodsman of Texas. A
+Brigadier, who looked like an honest, substantial planter, lay half over
+the rails, upon which he had doubtless stood encouraging his men, while
+lying half upon his body were two beardless boys, members of his staff,
+and not unlikely of his family. Perhaps all the male members of that
+family had been hurried at once from life by that single shell. The
+sight was sickening. Who, if privileged, would be willing to fix a limit
+to God's retributive justice upon the heads of the infamous, and in many
+instances cowardly originators of this Rebellion!
+
+Cavalry scouting parties brought back the word that the country to the
+river was clear of the rebels, and in accordance with what seemed to be
+the prevailing policy of the master-mind of the campaign, immediate
+orders to move were then issued. The troops marched through that village
+of hospitals,--Sharpsburg--and halted within a mile and a half of the
+river, in the rear of a brick dwelling, which was then taken and
+subsequently used as the Head-Quarters of Major-General Fitz John
+Porter. A line of battle was again formed, arms stacked, and an order
+issued that the ground would be occupied during the night.
+
+In the morning the march was again resumed by a road which wound around
+the horseshoe-shaped bend in the river. When approaching the river,
+firing was heard, apparently as if from the other side, and a short
+distance further details were observed carrying wounded men and ranging
+them comfortably around the many hay and straw stacks of the
+neighborhood. Inquiry revealed that a reconnoitring party, misled by the
+apparent quiet of the other side, had crossed, fallen into an ambuscade,
+and under the most galling of fires, artillery and musketry, kept up
+most unmercifully by the advancing rebels, who thus ungraciously repaid
+the courtesy shown them the day after Antietam--had been compelled to
+recross that most difficult ford. Our loss was frightful--one new and
+most promising regiment was almost entirely destroyed.
+
+The men thought of the dead earnestness of the rebels, and as they moved
+forward around the winding Potomac--deep, full of shelving, sunken
+rocks, from the dam a short distance above the ford, that formerly fed
+the mill owned by a once favorably known Congressman, A. R. Boteler, to
+where it was touched by our line--they reviewed with redoubled force,
+the helplessness of the rebels a few days previously, and to say the
+least, the carelessness of the leader of the Union army.
+
+The regimental camp was selected in a fine little valley that narrowed
+into a gap between the bluffs, bordering upon the canal, sheltered by
+wood, and having every convenience of water. The rebels had used it but
+a few days previously, and the necessity was immediate for heavy details
+for police duty. And here we passed quite unexpectedly six weeks of days
+more pleasant to the men than profitable to the country, and of which
+something may be said in our two succeeding chapters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_A Regimental Baker--Hot Pies--Position of the Baker in line of
+Battle--Troubles of the Baker--A Western Virginia Captain on a Whiskey
+Scent--The Baker's Story--How to obtain Political Influence--Dancing
+Attendance at Washington--What Simon says--Confiscation of Whiskey._
+
+
+Besides the indispensables of quartermaster and sutler the 210th had
+what might be considered a luxury in the shape of a baker, who had
+volunteered to accompany the regiment, and furnish hot cakes, bread, and
+pies. Tom Hudson was an original in his way, rather short of stature,
+far plumper and more savory-looking than one of his pies, with a
+pleasing countenance and twinkling black eye, that meant humor or
+roguishness as circumstances might demand, and a never-ending supply of
+what is always popular, dry humor. He was just the man to manage the
+thousand caprices of appetite of a thousand different men. While in
+camps accessible to the cities of Washington and Alexandria, matters
+moved smoothly enough. His zinc-plated bakery was always kept fired up,
+and a constant supply of hot pies dealt out to the long strings of men,
+who would stand for hours anxiously awaiting their turn. A movement of
+the baker's interpreted differently by himself and the men, at one time
+created considerable talk and no little feeling. On several occasions
+the trays were lifted out of the oven, and the pies dashed upon the
+out-spread expectant hands, with such force as to break the too often
+half-baked undercrust. In consequence the juices would ooze out, trickle
+scalding hot between the fingers, and compel the helpless man to drop
+the pie. One unfortunate fellow lost four pies in succession. As they
+cost fifteen cents apiece, the pocket was too much interested to let the
+matter escape notice. A non-commissioned officer, who had lost a pie,
+savagely returned to the stand, and demanded another pie or his money.
+The baker was much too shrewd for that. The precedent, if set, would
+well nigh exhaust his stock of pies, and impoverish his cash drawer.
+
+"I say," said the officer, turning to the men, "it is a trick. He wants
+to sell as many pies as he can. He knows well enough that when one falls
+in this mud fifteen cents are gone slap."
+
+"Now, boys," said the baker blandly, "you know me better than that. I'd
+scorn to do an act of that kind for fifteen cents. You know how it
+is--what a rush there always is here. You want the pies as soon as
+baked, and baking makes them hot. Now I want to accommodate you all as
+soon as possible, and of course I serve them out as soon as baked. You
+had better all get tin-plates or boards."
+
+"That won't go down, old fellow," retorted the officer. "You know that
+there is hardly a tin-plate in camp, and boards are not to be had."
+
+A wink from the baker took the officer to the private passage in the
+rear of his tent. What happened there is known but to the two, but ever
+after the officer held his peace. Not so with the men. However, as the
+pies were not dealt out as hot in future, the matter gradually passed
+from their minds.
+
+To make himself popular with the men, Tom resorted to a variety of
+expedients, one of which was to assure them that in case of an
+enterprise that promised danger, he would be with them. He was taken up
+quite unexpectedly. An ammunition train on the morning of the second
+battle of Bull Run, bound to the field, required a convoy. The regiment
+was detailed. Tom's assertions had come to the ears of the regimental
+officers, and without being consulted, he was provided with a horse, and
+told to keep near the Adjutant. There was a drizzling rain all day long,
+but through it came continually the booming of heavy ordnance.
+
+"Colonel! how far do you suppose that firing is?" "And are they Rebel
+cannon?" were frequent inquiries made by Tom during the day. About noon
+he asserted that he could positively ride no further. But ride he must
+and ride he did. The Regiment halted near Centreville, having passed
+Porter's Corps on the way and convoyed the Train to the required point.
+After a short halt the homeward route was taken and Tom placed in the
+rear. By some accident, frequent when trains take up the road, he became
+separated from the Regiment and lost among the teams. The Regiment moved
+on, and as it was now growing dark, turned into a wood about half a mile
+distant, for the night. Tom had just learned his route, when "ping!"
+came a shell from a Rebel battery on a hill to the left, exploded among
+some team horses, and created awful confusion. He suddenly forgot his
+soreness, and putting spurs to his horse at a John Gilpin speed, rode
+by, through and over, as he afterwards said, the teams. The shells flew
+rapidly. Tom dodged as if every one was scorching his hair, at the same
+time giving a vigorous kick to the rear with both heels. At his speed
+he was soon by the teams; in fact did not stop until he was ten Virginia
+miles from that scene of terror. But we will meet him again in the
+morning.
+
+The Regiment was soon shelled out of the wood, and compelled to continue
+its march. Three miles further they encamped in a meadow, passed a wet
+night without shelter, and early next morning were again upon the road.
+Thousands of stragglers lined the way, living upon rations plundered
+from broken-down baggage wagons--lounging lazily around fires that were
+kept in good glow by rails from the fences near which they were built.
+The preceding day these stragglers and skulkers were met in squads at
+every step of the road. At a point sufficiently remote from danger,
+their camps commenced. In one of these camps, situated in a fence
+corner, the baker was espied, stretched at full length and fast asleep,
+upon two rails placed at a gentle slope at right angles to the fence.
+Surrounding him were filthy, mean-looking representatives of
+half-a-dozen various regiments--the Zouave more gay than gallant in
+flaming red breeches--blouses, dress coats, and even a pair of shoulder
+straps, assisted to complete the crowd. Near by was tied his jaded
+horse.
+
+The baker was awakened. To his surprise, as he said, he saw the
+regiment, as he had supposed them to be much nearer home than himself.
+One of his graceless comrades, however, bluntly contradicted this, and
+accused him of being mortally frightened when he halted the night
+before, as although they assured him that he was full ten miles from
+danger, he insisted that these rifled guns had terribly long range. The
+baker remonstrated, and quietly resumed his place by the Adjutant and
+Colonel.
+
+"I have been thinking, Colonel," said he, in the course of a half hour,
+riding alongside of the Colonel, and speaking in an undertone, "that I
+ran a great risk unnecessarily."
+
+"Why?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"You see my exhortations are worth far more to the men than my example.
+When they crowd my quarters, as they do every morning, I never fail to
+deal out patriotic precepts with my pies."
+
+"But particularly the pies," retorted the Colonel.
+
+"That is another branch of my case," slily continued the baker.
+"Suppose, if such a calamity can be dwelt upon, that I had been killed,
+and there was only one mule between me and death, who would have run my
+bakery? who," elevating his voice, "would have furnished hot rolls for
+the officers, and warm bread cakes and pies for the men? Riding along
+last night, these matters were all duly reflected upon, and I wound up,
+by deciding that the regiment could not afford to lose me."
+
+"But you managed to lose the regiment," replied the Colonel.
+
+"Pure accident that, I assure you, upon honor. Now in line of battle I
+have taken pains to ascertain my true position, but this confounded
+marching by the flank puts me out of sorts. In line of battle the
+quartermaster says he is four miles in the rear--the sutler says that he
+is four miles behind the quartermaster, and as it would look singular
+upon paper to shorten the distance for the baker, besides other good
+reasons, I suppose I am four miles behind the sutler."
+
+"Completely out of range for all purposes," observed the Adjutant, who
+had slily listened with interest.
+
+"There is a good reason for that position, it is well chosen, and shows
+foresight," continued the baker, dropping his rein, and enforcing his
+remarks by apt gestures. "Suppose we are in line of battle, and the
+Rebels in line facing us at easy rifle range. Their prisoners say that
+they have lived for a month past on roasted corn and green apples. Now
+what will equal the daring of a hungry man! These Rebel Commanders are
+shrewd in keeping their men hungry; our men have heart for the fight, it
+is true, but the rebels have a stomach for it--they hunger for a chance
+at the spoils. The quartermaster then with his crackers, as they must
+not be needlessly inflamed, must be kept out of sight--the sutler, too,
+with his stores, must be kept shady--but above all the baker. Suppose
+the baker to be nearer," said he, with increased earnestness, "and a
+breeze should spring up towards their lines bearing with it the smell of
+warm bread, the rebels would rise instanter on tip-toe, snuff a
+minute--concentrate on the bakery, and no two ranks or columns doubled
+on the centre, could keep the hungry devils back. Our line pierced, we
+might lose the day--lose the day, sir."
+
+"And the baker," said the Major, joining in the laugh caused by his
+argument.
+
+Shortly after that march, matters went indifferently with the baker.
+Camp was changed frequently, and over the rough roads he kept up with
+difficulty.
+
+A week after the battle of Antietam, after satisfying himself fully of
+the departure of the Rebels, he arrived in camp. He had picked up by the
+way an ill-favored assistant, whose tent stood on the hill side some
+little distance from the right flank of the regiment.
+
+Two nights after his arrival there was a commotion in camp. A tonguey
+corporal, slightly under regulation size, in an exuberance of spirits,
+had mounted a cracker-box almost immediately in front of the sutler's
+tent, and commenced a lively harangue. He told how he had left a
+profitable grocery business to serve his country--his pecuniary
+sacrifices--but above all, the family he had left behind.
+
+"And you've blissed them by taking your characther with you," chimed in
+the little Irish corporal.
+
+"Where did you steal your whiskey?" demanded a second.
+
+The confusion increased, the crowd was dispersed by the guard, all at
+the expense of the sutler's credit, as it was rumored that he had
+furnished the stimulant.
+
+The sutler indignantly demanded an investigation, and three officers,
+presumed to possess a scent for whiskey above their fellows, were
+detailed for the duty. One of these was our friend the Virginia captain.
+
+Under penalty of losing his stripes, the corporal confessed that he had
+obtained the liquor at the baker's. Thither the following evening the
+detail repaired. The assistant denied all knowledge of the liquor. He
+was confronted with the corporal, and admitted the charge, and that but
+three bottles remained.
+
+"By ----," said our Western Virginia captain, hands in pocket, "I smell
+ten more. There are just thirteen bottles or I'll lose my straps."
+
+The confidence of the captain impressed the detail, and they went to
+work with a will--emptying barrels of crackers, probing with a bayonet
+sacks of flour, etc. A short search, to the pretended amazement of the
+assistant, proved the correctness of the captain's scent. The baker was
+sent for, and with indignant manner and hands lifted in holy horror, he
+poured volley after volley of invective at the confounded assistant.
+
+"But, gentlemen," said the baker, dropping his tone, "I've known worse
+things than this to happen. I've known even bakers to get tight."
+
+"And your bacon would have stood a better chance of being saved if you
+had got tight, instead of putting a non-commissioned officer in that
+condition," said one of the detail. "The Colonel, I am afraid, Tom, will
+clear you out."
+
+"Well," sighed the baker, after a pause of a moment, "talk about Job and
+all the other unfortunates since his day, why not one of them had my
+variety of suffering. Did you ever hear any of my misfortunes?"
+
+"We see one."
+
+"My life has been a series of mishaps. I prosper occasionally in small
+things, but totals knock me. God help me if I hadn't a sure port in a
+storm--a self-supporting wife. For instance--but I can't commence that
+story without relieving my thirst." A bottle was opened, drinks had all
+around, and the baker continued--
+
+"You see, gentlemen, when Simon was in political power, I waggled
+successfully and extensively among the coal mines in Central
+Pennsylvania. In those localities voters are kept underground until
+election day, and they then appear above often in such unexpected force
+as to knock the speculations of unsophisticated politicians. But Simon
+was not one of that stripe. He knew his men--the real men of influence;
+not men that have big reputations created by active but less widely
+known under-workers, but the under-workers themselves. Simon dealt with
+these, and he rarely mistook his men. Now I was well known in those
+parts--kept on the right side of the boys, and the boys tried to keep on
+the right side of me, and Simon knew it. No red tape fettered Simon, as
+the boys say it tied our generals the other side of Sharpsburg in order
+to let the Rebs have time to cross. If the measures that his shrewd
+foresight saw were necessary for the suppression of this Rebellion, at
+its outbreak, had been adopted, we would be encamped somewhat lower down
+in Dixie than the Upper Potomac--if indeed there would be any necessity
+for our being in service at all.
+
+"He was not a man of old tracks, like a ground mole; indeed like some
+military commanders who seem lost outside of them; but of ready
+resources and direct routes, gathering influence now by one means and
+then by another, and perhaps both novel. Now Simon set me at work in
+this wise.
+
+"'Tom,' one morning, says an old and respected citizen of our place, who
+knew my father and my father's father, and me as an unlucky dog from my
+cradle, 'Tom, did ever any idea of getting a permanent and profitable
+position--say, as you are an excellent penman--as clerk in one of the
+departments at Harrisburg or Washington, enter your head?'
+
+"At this I straightened up, drew up my shirt collar, pulled down my
+vest, and said with a sort of hopeful inquiry, 'Why should there?'
+
+"'Tom, you are wasting your most available talent. Do you know that you
+have influence--and political influence at that?'
+
+"Another hitch at my shirt collar and pull at my vest, as visions of the
+Brick Capitol at Harrisburg and the White one at Washington danced
+before my eyes.
+
+"'Did you ever reflect, Tom, upon the source of political power?'
+continued the old gentleman, and without waiting for an answer,
+fortunately, as I was fast becoming dumbfoundered, 'the people, Tom, the
+people; not you and I, so much as that miner,' said he, pointing to a
+rough ugly-looking fellow that I had kicked out of my wife's
+bar-room--or, rather, got my ostler to do it--two nights before, 'That
+man, Tom, is a representative of thousands; we may represent but
+ourselves. Now these people are controlled. They neither think nor act
+for themselves, as a general rule; somebody does that for them. Now,' as
+he spoke, trying to take me by a pulled-out button-hole, 'you might as
+well be that somebody as any man I know.'
+
+"'Why, Lord bless you, Mr. Simpson, I can't do my own thinking, and as
+to acting, my wife says I am acting the fool all day long.'
+
+"'Tom, you don't comprehend me, you know our county sends three members
+to the State Legislature, and that they elect a United States Senator.'
+
+"'Yes.'
+
+"'Well, now, our county can send Simon C---- to the United States
+Senate.'
+
+"'But our county oughtn't to do it,'--my whig prejudices that I had
+imbibed with my mother's milk coming up strong.
+
+"'Tut, tut, Tom, didn't I stand shoulder to shoulder with your father in
+the old Clay Legion? Whiggery has had its day, and Henry Clay would
+stand with us now.'
+
+"'But with Simon's?'
+
+"'Yes, Simon's principles have undergone a wholesome change.'
+
+"I couldn't see it, but didn't like to contradict the old man, and he
+continued.
+
+"'Now, Thomas, be a man; you have influence. I know you have it.' Here I
+straightened up again. 'Just look at the miners who frequent your hotel,
+each of them has influence, and don't you think that you could control
+their votes? Should you succeed, Simon's Scotch blood will never let him
+forget a friend.'
+
+"'Or forgive an enemy,' I added.
+
+"'Tom, don't let your foolish prejudices stand in the way of your
+success. Your father would advise as I do.'
+
+"'Mr. S., I'll try.'
+
+"'That's the word, Tom,' said the old man, patting me on the shoulder.
+'It runs our steam-engines, builds our factories, in short, has made our
+country what it is.'
+
+"I took Mr. S.'s hand, thanked him for his suggestions, with an effort
+swallowed my prejudices against the old Chieftain, and resolved to work
+as became my new idea of my position.
+
+"By the way, the recollection of that effort to swallow makes my throat
+dry, and it's a long time between drinks."
+
+Another round at the bottle, and Tom resumed.
+
+"'Well, work I did, like a beaver; there wasn't a miner in my
+neighborhood that I didn't treat, and a miner's baby that I didn't kiss,
+and often their wives, as some unprincipled scoundrel one day told Mrs.
+Hudson, to the great injury of my ears and shins for almost a week, and
+the upshot of the business was, that my township turned a political
+somerset. Friends of Simon's, in disguise, went to Harrisburg, were
+successful, and I was not among the last to congratulate him.
+
+"'Mr. Hudson,' said the Prince of politicians, 'how can I repay you for
+your services?'
+
+"Like a fool, as my wife always told me I was, I made no suggestion, but
+let the remark pass with the tameness of a sheep--merely muttering that
+it was a pleasure to serve him. Simon went to Washington--made no
+striking hits on the floor, but was great on committees.
+
+"Another idea entered my noddle, this clip without the aid of Mr. S. My
+penmanship came into play. Days and nights of most laborious work
+produced a full length portrait of Simon, that at the distance of ten
+feet could not be distinguished from a fine engraving. I seized my
+opportunity, found Simon in cozy quarters opposite Willard's, and
+presented it in person. He was delighted--his daughter was delighted--a
+full-faced heavily bearded Congressman present was delighted, and after
+repeated assurances of 'thine to serve,' on the part of the Senator, I
+crossed to my hotel--not Willard's--hadn't as yet sufficient elevation
+of person and depth of purse for that,--but an humbler one in a back
+street. Next day I saw my handiwork in the Rotunda--the admiration of
+all but a black long-haired puppy, an M. C. and F. F. V., as I
+afterwards learned, who said to a lady at his elbow who had admired it,
+'Practice makes some of the poor clerks at the North tolerably good
+pensmen.' I could have kicked him, but thought it might interfere with
+the little matter in hand.
+
+"'Tom,' said the senatorial star of my hopes one day, when my purse had
+become as lean as a June shad, 'Tom, there is a place of $800 a year, I
+have in view. A Senator is interfering, but I think it can be managed.
+You must have patience, these things take time. I will write to you as
+early as any definite result is attained.'
+
+"Relying on Simon's management, which in his own case had never failed,
+next morning saw me in the cars with light heart and lighter purse,
+bound for home and Mrs. H., who I am always proud to think regretted my
+absence more than my presence, although she would not admit it.
+
+"Days passed; months passed; my wife reproached me with lost time--my
+picture was gone; I had not heard from Simon; I ventured to write; next
+mail brought a letter rich in indefinite promises.
+
+"Years passed, and Simon was Secretary of War at a time when the office
+had influence, position, and patronage, unequalled in its previous
+history. 'Now is your time, Tom,' something within whispered--not
+conscience--for that did not seem to favor my connection with Simon.
+
+"I wrote again. Quarter-Masters, Clerks by the thousands, Paymasters--I
+was always remarkably ready in disposing of funds--and Heaven only knows
+what not were wanted in alarming numbers. Active service was proposed by
+Simon; but you know, gentlemen, I am constitutionally disqualified for
+that. And after tediously waiting months longer, I succeeded without
+Simon's aid in obtaining my present honorable but unfortunate position.
+
+"And that reminds me of the whiskey, another round, men." It was taken;
+Tom's idea was to drink the detail into forgetfulness of their errand.
+But he missed his men. He might as well have tried to lessen a sponge by
+soaking it. The Virginia Captain announced that the Colonel had ordered
+them to confiscate the whiskey for the use of the Hospital, and to the
+Surgeon's quarters the detail must next proceed. The Captain gathered up
+the bottles. The detail bowed themselves out of the tent, and poor Tom
+thought his misfortunes crowned, as he saw them leave laboring under a
+load of liquor inside and out. At the Surgeon's tent we will again see
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_The Scene at the Surgeon's Quarters--Our Little Dutch Doctor--Incidents
+of his Practice.--His Messmate the Chaplain--The Western Virginia
+Captain's account of a Western Virginia Chaplain--His Solitary oath--How
+he Preached, how he Prayed, and how he Bush-whacked--His revenge of
+Snowden's death--How the little Dutch doctor applied the Captain's
+Story._
+
+
+Taps had already been sounded before the detail arrived at the Surgeon's
+tent. The only Surgeon present had retired to his blankets. Aroused by
+the blustering, he soon lit a candle, and sticking the camp candlestick
+into the ground, invited them in.
+
+And here we must introduce the Assistant-Surgeon, or rather the little
+Dutch Doctor as he was familiarly called by the men. Considering his
+character and early connexion with the regiment, we are at fault in not
+giving him an earlier place in these pages.
+
+The Doctor was about five feet two in height, hardly less in
+circumference about the waist, of an active habit of body and turn of
+mind, eyes that winked rapidly when he was excited, and a movable scalp
+which threw his forehead into multiform wrinkles as cogitations beneath
+it might demand. A Tyrolese by birth, he was fond of his Father-land,
+its mountain songs, and the customs of its people. Topics kindred to
+these were an unfailing fund of conversation with him. Thoroughly
+educated, his conversation in badly-broken English, for he made little
+progress in acquiring the language, at once amused and instructed. Among
+his fellow surgeons and officers of his acquaintance, he ranked high as
+a skilful surgeon on account of superior attainments, acquired partly
+through the German Universities and partly in the Austrian service,
+during the campaign of Magenta, Solferino, and the siege of Mantua. With
+a German's fondness for music, he beguiled the tedium of many a long
+winter evening. With his German education he had imbibed radicalism to
+its full extent. Thoroughly conversant with the Sacred Scriptures he was
+a doubter, if not a positive unbeliever, from the Pentateuch to
+Revelation. In addition to this, his flings at the Chaplain, his
+messmate, made him unpopular with the religiously inclined of the
+regiment. He had besides, the stolidity of the German, and their cool
+calculating practicalism. This did not always please the men. They
+thought him unfeeling.
+
+"What for you shrug your shoulders?' said he on one occasion to a man
+from whose shoulders he was removing a large fly blister.
+
+"It hurts."
+
+"Bah, wait till I cuts your leg off--and you know what hurts."
+
+"Here, you sick man, here goot place," said he, addressing a man just
+taken to the hospital with fever, in charge of an orderly sergeant, at
+surgeon's call, "goot place, nice, warm, dead man shust left." Remarks
+such as these did not, of course, tend to increase the comfort of the
+men; they soon circulated among the regiment, were discussed in
+quarters, and as may be supposed greatly exaggerated, and all at the
+Doctor's cost. But the Doctor pursued the even tenor of his way,
+entirely unmindful of them.
+
+About the time of which we write, a clever, honest man died of a disease
+always sudden in its termination, rheumatic attack upon the heart. The
+Doctor had informed him fully of his disease, and that but little could
+be done for it. The poor man, however, was punctual in attendance at
+Surgeon's Call, and insisted upon some kind of medicine. Bread pills
+were furnished. One morning, after great complaint of pain about the
+heart, and a few spasms, he died. His comrades, shocked, thought his
+death the effect of improper medicine. The Doctor's pride was touched.
+He insisted upon calling in other surgeons; the pills found in his
+pocket were analyzed, and discovered to be only bread. The corpse was
+opened, and the cause of death fully revealed. As the Doctor walked away
+in stately triumph, some of the men who had been boisterous against him,
+approached by way of excusing their conduct, and said that now they were
+perfectly satisfied. "What you know!" was his gruff reply, "you not know
+a man's heart from a pig's."
+
+Many like incidents might be told--but we must not leave these Captains
+standing too long at the door of the tent; with the production of the
+light in they came, with the remark that they had brought hospital
+supplies. In the meantime several officers, field and company, attracted
+by the noise and whiskey; came in from regimental head-quarters.
+
+"Must see if goot," and the Doctor applied the bottle to his lips; it
+was not a favorite drink of his, and tasted badly in lieu of Rhine wine
+or lager.
+
+"May be goot whiskey."
+
+"Let practical whiskey drinkers have a chance," said two or three at
+once, and the bottle went its round.
+
+The test was not considered satisfactory until another and another had
+been emptied.
+
+The increasing confusion aroused the Chaplain, who hitherto had been
+snugly ensconced beneath his blankets in the corner opposite the Doctor.
+
+"Here, Chaplain, your opinion, and don't let us hear anything about
+putting the bottle to your neighbor's lips," said a rough voice in the
+crowd. The Chaplain politely declined, with the remark that they
+appeared too anxious to put the bottle to their own lips to require any
+assistance from their neighbors.
+
+"Chaplain not spiritually minded," muttered the Doctor, "so far but
+three preaches, and every preach cost government much as sixty tollar."
+The calculation at the Chaplain's expense, amused the crowd, and annoyed
+the Chaplain, who resumed his blankets.
+
+"When I was in Western Virginny, under Rosecrans,"--
+
+"The old start and good for a yarn," said an officer.
+
+"Good for facts," replied the Chief of the Detail.
+
+"Never mind, Captain, we'll take it as fact," said the Adjutant.
+
+"We had a chaplain that was a chaplain in every sense of the word."
+
+"Did he drink and swear?" inquired a member of the Detail.
+
+"On long marches and in fights he had a canteen filled with what he
+called chaplain's cordial, about one part whiskey and three water. I
+tasted it, but with little comfort. One day, a member of Rosy's staff
+seeing him pulling at it, asked for it, and after a strong pull, told
+the chaplain that he was weak in spiritual things. 'Blessed are the poor
+in spirit,' was the quick answer of the chaplain. As to swearing, he was
+never known to swear but once.
+
+"I heard an officer tell the Adjutant a day or two ago, that what was
+considered the prettiest sentence in the English language, had been
+written by a smutty preacher. I don't recollect the words as he repeated
+it, but it was about an old officer, who nursed a young one, and some
+one told him the young one would die. The old officer excited, said, 'By
+G--d, he sha'nt die.' It goes on to say then that an Angel flew up to
+heaven, to enter it in the great Book of Accounts, and that the Angel
+who made the charge cried over it and blotted it out. That is the
+substance anyhow. Well, sir, if the Third Virginny's Chaplain's oath was
+ever recorded it is in the same fix."
+
+"Well, tell us about it, how it happened," exclaimed several.
+
+"Why you see, Rosy sent over one day for a Major who had lately come
+into the Division, and told him that 300 rebels were about six miles to
+our left, in the bushes along a creek, and that he should take 300 men,
+and kill, capture, or drive them off. The Major was about to make a
+statement. 'That's all, Major,' with a wave of his hand for him to
+leave, 'I expect a good account.'
+
+"That was Rosy's style: he told an officer what he wanted, and he
+supposed the officer had gumption enough to do it, without bothering
+him, as some of our red-tape or pigeon-hole Generals, as the boys call
+them, do with long written statements that a memory like a tarred stick
+couldn't remember--telling where these ten men must be posted, those
+twenty-five, and another thirty, etc. I wonder what such office Generals
+think--that the Rebels will be fools enough to attack us when we want
+them to, or take ground that we would like to have them make a stand
+on."
+
+"Captain, we talk enough ourselves about that; on with the story."
+
+"Well, four companies, seventy-five strong each, were detailed to go
+with him, and mine among the number, from our regiment. The chaplain got
+wind of it, and go he would. By the time the detail was ready, he had
+his bullets run, his powder-horn and fixin's on, and long Tom, as he
+called his Kentucky rifle, slung across his shoulder."
+
+"His canteen?" inquired an officer disposed to be a little troublesome.
+
+"Don't recollect about that," said the Captain, somewhat curtly.
+
+"On the march he mixed with the men, talked with them about all kinds of
+useful matters, and gave them a world of information.
+
+"We had got about a mile from where we supposed the Rebels were; my
+company, in advance as skirmishers, had just cleared a wood, and were
+ten yards in the open, when the Butternuts opened fire from a wood ahead
+at long rifle range. One man was slightly wounded. We placed him against
+a tree with his back to the Rebels, and under cover of the woods were
+deciding upon a plan of attack, when up gallops our fat Major with just
+breath enough to say, 'My God, what's to be done?'
+
+"I'll never forget the chaplain's look at that. He had unslung long Tom;
+holding it up in his right hand, he fairly yelled out, 'Fight, by G--d!
+Boys, follow me.' And we did follow him. Skirting around through
+underbrush to our left, concealed from the Rebs, we came to an open
+again of about thirty yards. The Rebs had retired about eighty yards in
+the wood to where it was thicker.
+
+"Out sprang the Chaplain, making a worm fence, Indian fashion, for a big
+chestnut. We followed in same style. My orderly was behind another
+chestnut about ten feet to the Chaplain's left, and slightly to his
+rear. There was for a spell considerable random firing, but no one hurt,
+and the Rebs again retired a little. We soon saw what the Chaplain was
+after. About eighty-five yards in his front was another big chestnut,
+and behind it a Rebel officer. They blazed away at each other in fine
+style--both good shots, as you could tell by the bark being chipped, now
+just where the Chaplain's head was, and now just where the officer's
+was. The officer was left-handed. The Chaplain could fire right or left
+equally well. By a kind of instinct for fair play and no gouging that
+even the Rebs feel at times, the rest on both sides looked at that
+fight, and wouldn't mix. My orderly had several chances to bring the
+Rebel. Their rifles cracked in quick succession for quite a spell. The
+Chaplain, at last, not wanting an all-day affair of it, carefully again
+drew a bead on a level with the chip marks on the left of the Rebel
+tree. He had barely time to turn his head without deranging the aim,
+when a ball passed through the rim of his hat. As he turned his head, he
+gave a wink to the orderly, who was quick as lightning in taking a hint.
+A pause for nearly a minute. By and by the Rebel pokes his head out to
+see what was the matter. Seeing the gun only, and thinking the Chaplain
+would give him a chance when he'd take aim, he did not pull it in as
+quick as usual. My orderly winked,--a sharp crack, and the Rebel officer
+threw up his hands, dropped his rifle, and fell backward, with well nigh
+an ounce ball right over his left eye, through and through his head. Our
+men cheered for the Chaplain. The Rebs fired in reply, and rushed to
+secure the body. That cost them three more men, but they got their
+bodies, and fast as legs could carry them, cut to their fort about
+three miles to their rear. We of course couldn't attack the fort, and
+returned to camp. The boys were loud in praise of the Chaplain. Their
+chin music, as they called camp rumors, had it that the officer killed
+was a Rebel chaplain. Old Rosy, when he heard of it, laughed, and swore
+like a trooper. I hear he has got over swearing now--but it couldn't
+have been until after he left Western Virginny. I heard our Chaplain say
+that he heard a brother chaplain say, and he believed him to be a
+Christian,--that he believed that the Apostle Paul himself would learn
+to swear inside of six months, if he entered the service in Western
+Virginny. Washington prayed at Trenton, and swore at Monmouth, and I
+don't believe that the War Department requires Chaplains to be better
+Christians than Washington. Our old Chaplain used to say that there were
+many things worse than swearing, and that he didn't believe that men
+often swore away their chances of heaven."
+
+"Comforting gospel for you, captain," said that troublesome officer.
+
+"He was a bully chaplain," continued the captain, becoming more
+animated, probably because the regimental chaplain, turtle-like, had
+again protruded his head from between the blankets. "He had no long
+tailed words or doctrines that nobody understood, that tire soldiers,
+because they don't understand them, and make them think that the
+chaplain is talking only to a few officers. That's what so often keeps
+men away from religious services. Our chaplain used to say that you
+could tell who Paul was talking to by his style of talk. I can't say how
+that is from my own reading; but I always heard that Paul was a sensible
+man, and if so he certainly would suit himself to the understanding of
+his crowd."
+
+"Our old chaplain talked right at you. No mistake he meant
+you--downright, plain, practical, and earnest. He'd tell his crowd of
+backwoodsmen, flatboatmen and deck hands--the hardest customers that the
+gospel was ever preached to,--'That the war carried on by the Government
+was the most righteous of wars; they were doing God's service by
+fighting in it. On the part of the rebels it was the most unnatural and
+wicked of wars. They called it a second Revolutionary War, the
+scoundrels! When my father and your father, Tom Hulzman,' said he,
+addressing one of his hearers, 'fought in the Revolution, they fought
+against a tyrannical monarchy that was founded upon a landed
+aristocracy--that is, rich big feeling people, that owned very big
+farms. The Government stands in this war, if any thing, better than our
+fathers stood. We fight against what is far worse than a landed
+aristocracy, meaner in the sight of God and more hated by honest men,
+this accursed slave aristocracy, that will, if they whip us--(Can't do
+that, yell the crowd.) No, they can't. If they should, we would be no
+better than the poor whites that are permitted to live a dog's life on
+some worn-out corner of a nigger-owner's plantation. Would you have your
+children, Joe Dixon, insulted, made do the bidding of some long-haired
+lank mulatto nabob? (Never, says Joe.) Then, boys, look to your arms,
+fire low, and don't hang on the aim. We must fight this good fight out,
+and thank God we can do it. If we die, blessed will be our memory in the
+hearts of our children. If we live and go to our firesides
+battle-scarred, our boys can say, 'See how dad fought, and every scar in
+front,' and we'll be honored by a grateful people.' And he'd tell of the
+sufferings of their parents, wives, and children, if we didn't succeed,
+till the water courses on the dirty faces of his crowd would be as plain
+as his preaching.
+
+"And pray! he'd pray with hands and eyes both open, in such a way that
+every one believed it would have immediate attention; that God would
+damn the Rebellion; and may be next day he'd have Long Tom doing its
+full share in hurrying the rebels themselves to damnation.
+
+"And kind hearted! why old Tim Larkins, who had a wound on the shin that
+wouldn't heal, told me with tears in his eyes that he had been mother,
+wife, and child to him. He went about doing good.
+
+"And now I recollect," and the Captain's eye glistened as he spoke, "how
+he acted when young Snowden was wounded. Snowden was a slender,
+pale-faced stripling of sixteen, beloved by every body that knew him,
+and if ever a perfect Christian walked this earth, he was one, even if
+he was in service in Western Virginny. The chaplain was fond of company,
+and, as was his duty, mixed with the men. Snowden was reserved, much by
+himself, and had little or no chance to learn bad habits; that is the
+only way I can account for his goodness. I often heard the chaplain tell
+the boys to imitate Snowden, and not himself; 'you'll find a pure mouth
+there, boys, because the heart is pure; you'll see no letters of
+introduction to the devil,' as the chaplain called cards, 'in his
+knapsack.' By the way, he was so hard on cards, that even the boatmen,
+who knew them better than their A B C's, were ashamed to play them. He
+would say, 'Snowden is brave as man can be; he has a right to be, he is
+prepared for every fate. A christian, boys, makes all the better soldier
+for his being a Christian,' and he would tell us of Washington, Col.
+Gardner, that preacher that suffered, fought and died near Elizabeth, in
+the Jerseys, and others.
+
+"In bravery, none excelled Snowden. We were lying down once, but about
+sixty yards from a wood chuck full of rebels, when word was sent that
+our troops on the left must be signalled, to charge in a certain way.
+Several understood the signs, but Snowden first rose, mounted a stump,
+and did not get off although receiving flesh wounds in half-a-dozen
+different places, and his clothing cut to ribands, until he saw the
+troops moving as directed. How we gritted our teeth as we heard the
+bullets whiz by that brave boy. I have the feeling yet. We thought his
+goodness saved him. His was goodness! Not that kind that will stare a
+preacher full in the face from a cushioned pew on Sunday, and gouge you
+over the counter on Monday, but the genuine article. His time was yet to
+come.
+
+"One day we had driven the rebels through a rough country some miles,
+skirmishing with their rear-guard; the Chaplain and Snowden with my
+company foremost. We neared a small but deep creek the rebels had
+crossed, and trying to get across, we were scattered along the bank. I
+heard a shot, and as I turned I saw poor Snowden fall, first on his knee
+and then on his elbow. I called the Chaplain. They were messmates--he
+loved Snowden as his own child, and always called him 'my boy.' He
+rushed to him, 'My boy, who fired that shot?' The lad turned to a clump
+of bushes about 80 yards distant on the other side of the creek. Long
+Tom was in hand, but the rebel was first, and a ball cut the Chaplain's
+coat collar. The flash revealed him; in an instant long Tom was in
+range, and another instant saw a Butternut belly face the sun. Dropping
+his piece, falling upon his knee, he raised Snowden gently up with his
+left hand. 'I am dying,' whispered the boy, 'tell my mother I'll meet
+her in heaven.' The Chaplain raised his right hand, his eyes swimming
+in tears, and in tones that I'll never forget, and that make me a better
+man every time I think of them, he said, 'O God, the pure in heart is
+before thee, redeem thy promise, and reveal thyself.' A slight gurgle,
+and with a pleasant smile playing upon his countenance, the soul of John
+Snowden, if there be justice in heaven, went straight up to the God who
+gave it." Tears had come to the Captain's eyes, and were glistening in
+the eyes of most of the crowd.
+
+The Dutch doctor alone was unmoved. Stoically he remarked, "Very goot
+story, Captain, goot story, do our Chaplain much goot."
+
+The crowd left quietly--all but the Captain, who, never forgetting
+business in the hurry of the moment, drew a receipt for the transfer of
+thirteen bottles of whiskey to the hospital department, which the doctor
+signed without reading.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_A Day at Division Head-Quarters--The Judge Advocate--The tweedle-dum
+and tweedle-dee of Red-Tape as understood by Pigeon-hole
+Generals--Red-tape Reveries--French Authorities on Pigeon-hole
+Investigations--An Obstreperous Court and Pigeon-hole
+Strictures--Disgusting Head-Quarter Profanity._
+
+
+"The General commanding Division desires to see Lieutenant Colonel ----,
+210th Regiment, P. V., Judge Advocate, immediately," were words that met
+the eye of the latter officer, as he unfolded a note handed him by an
+orderly. It was about nine in the forenoon of a fine day in October.
+Buckling on his sword, and ordering his horse, he rode at a lively
+canter to the General's Head-Quarters.
+
+"Colonel," said the General, pulling vigorously at the same time at the
+left side of his moustache, as if anxious that his teeth should take
+hold of it, "I have sent for you in regard to this Record. Do you know,
+sir, that this Record has given me a d----d sight of trouble; why, sir,
+I consulted authorities the greater part of last night, French and
+American."
+
+"In regard to what point, General?"
+
+"In regard to what point? In regard to all the points, sir. There, sir,
+is the copy made of that order detailing the Court. It reads, 'Detailed
+for the Court,' whereas it should be 'Detail for the Court.' My mind is
+not made up fully as to whether the variance vitiates the Record or not.
+The authorities appear to be silent upon that point. To say the least,
+it is d----d awkward."
+
+"General, the copy is a faithful one of the order issued from your
+Head-Quarters."
+
+"From my Head-Quarters, sir? By G--d, Colonel, that can't be. If I have
+been particular, and have prided myself upon any one thing, it has been
+upon having papers drawn strictly according to the Regulations. And I
+have tried to impress it upon my clerks. That infernal blunder made at
+my Head-Quarters! I'll soon see how that is." And the General, Record in
+hand, took long strides, for a little man, towards the Adjutant's tent.
+
+"Captain," said he, addressing an officer who was best known in the
+Division as a relative of a leading commander, and whose only claim to
+merit--in fact, it had to counterbalance many habits positively
+bad--consisted of his reposing under the shadow of a mighty name, "where
+is the original order detailing this Court?" "Here, General," said a
+clerk, producing the paper. The General's eye rested for a moment upon
+it, then throwing it upon the table, he burst out passionately:
+"Captain, this is too G--d d--n bad after all my care and trouble in
+giving you full instructions. Is it possible that the simplest order
+can't be made out without my supervision, as if, by G--d, it was my
+business to stand over your desks all day long, see every paper folded,
+endorsement made, and the right pigeon-hole selected? This won't do. I
+give full instructions, and expect them carried out. By G--d," continued
+the General, striding vehemently across to his marquee, "they must be
+carried out."
+
+"Colonel, I see that you are not accountable for this. If the d----d
+fool had only made it 'Detail of the Court,' it might have passed
+unnoticed."
+
+"General," suggested the Colonel, "would not that have been improper?
+Would it not have implied an already existing organization of the court?
+whereas the phrase in the order is intended merely to indicate who shall
+compose the court."
+
+"It would have looked better, sir," said the General, somewhat sharply.
+"Colonel, you are not to blame for this; you can return to quarters,
+sir."
+
+The Colonel bowed himself out, remounted his black horse, and while
+riding at a slow walk, could not but wonder if the Government would not
+have been the gainer if it had made it the business of the General to
+fold and endorse papers, and dust pigeon-holes. It was generally
+understood that this occupation had been, previous to his being placed
+in command of the Division, the sum-total of the General's military
+experience. And how high above him did this red-tapism extend? The
+General had been on McClellan's staff, and through his influence,
+doubtless, acquired his present position. Were its trifling details
+detaining the grand army of the Potomac from an onward movement in this
+most favorable weather, to the great detriment of national finances, the
+encouragement of the Rebellion, and the depression of patriots
+everywhere? Must the earnestness of the patriotic, self-sacrificing
+thousands in the field, be fettered by these cobwebs, constructed by men
+interested in pay and position? If so, then in its widest sense, is the
+utterance of an intelligent Sergeant, made a few days previous, true,
+that red-tape was a greater curse to the country than the rebellion. The
+loyal earnest masses would soon, if unfettered, have found leaders
+equally loyal and earnest--Joshuas born in the crisis of a righteous
+cause, whose unceasing blows would not have allowed the rebels breathing
+spells. It is not too late; but how much time, blood, to say nothing of
+money, have been expended in ascertaining that a great Union military
+leader thought the war in its best phase a mere contest for boundaries.
+
+The black halted at the tent door, was turned over to his attendant, and
+the Lieut.-Colonel joined his tent companion the Colonel.
+
+His stay was brief. In the course of a few minutes an orderly in great
+haste handed him the following note:
+
+"The General commanding Division desires to see Lieut.-Colonel ----
+without delay."
+
+The saddle, not yet off the black, was readjusted, and again the
+Judge-Advocate cantered over the gentle bluffs to Division
+Head-Quarters.
+
+"Colonel," said the General, hardly waiting for his entrance, "these
+mistakes multiply so, as I proceed in my duty as Reviewing Officer, that
+I am utterly confounded as to what course to pursue."
+
+"Will you please point them out, General?"
+
+"Point out the Devil!--will you point to something that is strictly in
+accordance with the regulations? Here you have 'Private John W. Holman,
+Co. I, 212th Regt. P. V.,' and then not two lines below, it is, John W.
+Holman, Private, Co. I, 212th Reg. P. V.' Now, by G--Colonel, one is
+certainly wrong, and _that_ blunder did not come from Division
+Head-Quarters."
+
+"Will the General please indicate which is correct?"
+
+"Indicate! that's the d----l of it, that is the perplexing question; my
+French authorities are silent on the subject, and yet, sir, you must
+see that one must be wrong."
+
+"That does not follow, General; it would be considered a mere clerical
+error. Records that I have seen have titles preceding and following
+both."
+
+"There is no such thing in military law as a mere clerical error. Every
+thing is squared here by the regulations and military law. The General
+or Colonel who is unfortunate in consequence of strictly following
+these, will not, by military men, regular officers at least, be held
+accountable. Do not understand me as combating your knowledge of the
+law, Colonel; you may have excused, in your practice, bad records
+successfully on the ground of 'clerical errors,' but it will not do in
+the army. There's where volunteer officers make their mistakes; they
+don't think and act concertedly as regulars do. Individual judgment
+steps in too often, and officers' judgments play the D--l in the army.
+Now, in France, their rules in regard to this, are unusually strict."
+
+"They order this matter better in France then," observed the Colonel,
+mechanically making use of the hackneyed opening sentence of "The
+Sentimental Journey." "And they manage them better, Sir;--Another thing,
+Colonel," quickly added the General, "t's must be crossed and i's
+carefully dotted. There are several omissions of this kind that might
+have sent the Record back. By the way, whose hand-writing is this copy
+in?" said the General, looking earnestly at the Colonel. "A clerk's,
+sir." "A clerk! Another d----d pretty piece of business," continued the
+General, rising. "Colonel, that record is not worth a G--d d--n not a
+G--d d--n, Sir! Who ever heard of a clerk being employed? no clerk has a
+right to know any thing of the proceedings."
+
+"I have been informed, General, and have observed from published reports
+of proceedings of courts-martial, that clerks are in general use."
+
+"Can't be! Colonel, can't be! By G--d, there is another perplexing
+matter for my already over-taxed time, and yet the senseless people
+expect Generals to move large armies, and plan big battles, when their
+hands are full of these d----d business details that cannot be neglected
+or delayed."
+
+The General resumed his seat, ran his fingers through his hair with
+frightful rapidity, as if gathering disconcerted and scattered ideas,
+for a moment or two, and then looking up dismissed the Colonel.
+
+The black was again in requisition; and again the Colonel's thoughts,
+with increased feelings of disgust, were directed to what he could not
+but think the trifling details that, as the General admitted, delay the
+movements of great armies, and the striking of heavy blows. T's must be
+crossed when we ought to be crossing the Potomac; i's dotted when we
+ought to be dotting Virginia fields with our tents. And war so
+proverbially, so historically uncertain, has its rules, which, if
+adhered to, will save commanders from censure--judgment not allowed to
+interfere. It would appear so from many movements in the history of the
+Army of the Potomac. What would that despiser of senseless details,
+defier of rules laid down by inferior men, and cutter of red tape, as
+well as master-genius in the art of war, the Great, the First Napoleon,
+have said to all this. Shades of Washington, Marion, Morgan, all the
+Revolutionary worthies, Jackson, all our Volunteer Officers, of whose
+military records we are justly proud--
+
+          "Of the mighty can it be
+          That this is all remains of thee!"
+
+Generals leading armies such as the world never before saw, fettering
+movements on the field by the movements of trifling office details at
+the desk, which viewed in the best light are the most contemptible of
+excuses for delay.
+
+This time the old black was not unsaddled;--a fortunate thought, as
+another request for the immediate presence of the Judge Advocate
+compelled him to take his dinner of boiled beans hasty and hot.
+
+Whatever the reader may think of the General's condition of mind during
+the preceding interviews, it was to reach its fever heat in this. The
+Colonel saw, as he entered the marquee, that his forced calmness of
+demeanor portended a storm. Whether the Colonel thought that a
+half-emptied good-sized tumbler of what looked like clear brandy which
+stood on the table before him, had anything to do with it, the reader
+must judge for himself.
+
+"Colonel, I had made up my mind to forward that Record with the mistakes
+I have already indicated to you, but after all I am pained to state that
+the total disregard of duty by the Court, and perhaps by yourself, in
+trifling--yes, by G--d--" here the General could keep in no longer, and
+rising with hand clinching the Record firmly, continued,--"trifling with
+a soldier's duty, the regulations, and the safety of the army will not
+allow it. Colonel, you are a lawyer, and is it possible that you can't
+see what that d----d Court has done?"
+
+"I would be happy to be informed in what respect they have erred,
+General."
+
+"Happy to be informed! how they have erred! By G--d, Colonel, you take
+this outrageous matter cool. That Record," said the General, holding it
+up, and waving it about his head,--the red tape with which the Judge
+Advocate had adorned it plentifully, if for no other purpose than to
+cover a multitude of mistakes, all the while streaming in the
+air,--"that Record is a disgrace to the Division. What does that Record
+show?" At this he threw it violently into a corner of the tent. "It
+shows, by G--d, that here was an enlisted soldier in the United States
+Army, found sleeping on his post in the dead hour of night, in the
+presence of the enemy, and yet--" said the General, lifting both hands
+clenched, "a pack of d----d volunteer officers detailed as a court let
+him off. Yes, I'll be G--d d----d," and his arms came down slapping
+against his hips, "let him off, with what? why a reprimand at dress
+parade, that isn't worth a d--n as a punishment. Here was a chance to
+benefit the Division; yes, sir, a military execution would do this
+Division good. It needs it; we'll have a d----d sight now to be
+court-martialed. What will General McClellan say with that record before
+him? Think of that, Colonel.'
+
+"I would be much more interested in what Judge Advocate Holt would say,
+General, on account of his vastly superior ability in that department;
+and as to the death penalty, General, I conscientiously think it would
+be little short of, if not quite, murder." The General had resumed his
+seat, but now arose as if about to interrupt;--but the Colonel
+continued:--
+
+"General, that boy is but seventeen, with a look that indicates
+unmistakably that he is half an idiot. He has an incurable disease that
+tends to increase his imbecility. His memory, if he ever had any, is
+completely gone. The Articles of War, or instructions of officers as to
+picket duty, would not be remembered by him a minute after utterance,
+and not understood when uttered. I have thought since that I should have
+entered a plea of insanity for him. He had not previously been upon
+duty for a month, and was that day placed on by mistake. The Court, if
+it had had the power, would have punished the officer that recruited him
+severely. He ought to be discharged; and the Court was informed that his
+application for discharge, based upon an all-sufficient surgeon's
+certificate, was forwarded to your head-quarters a month ago, and has
+not since been heard from. Besides, this was not a picket station, but a
+mere inside regimental camp guard."
+
+The Colonel spoke rapidly, but with coolness;--all the while the
+General's eyes, fairly glowing, were gazing down intently upon him.
+
+"Colonel, if your manner was not respectful, I would think that you
+intended insulting me by your d----d provoking coolness. Conscience!"
+said the General, sneeringly, "conscience or no conscience, that man
+must be duly sentenced. By G--d, I order it. You must reconvene the
+Court without delay. It is well seen it is not a detail of Regulars.
+Conscience wouldn't trouble them when a d----d miscreant was upon trial.
+A boy of seventeen! Seventeen or thirty-seven! By G--d! he is a soldier
+in the Army of the United States, and must be tried and punished as a
+soldier. An idiot! What need you care about the brains of a soldier? If
+he has the army cap on his head, that's all you need require. Plea of
+insanity, indeed! We want no lawyer's tricks here. And as to that
+discharge, if it is detained at my head-quarters, it is because it was
+not properly folded or endorsed--may be will not fit neatly in the
+pigeon-hole. Colonel," continued the General, moderating his tone
+somewhat, "I must animadvert--by G--d, I must animadvert severely upon
+that Record."
+
+"General," quietly interrupted the Colonel, "you will publish your
+animadversion, I trust, so that it can be read at dress parades, and the
+Division have the benefit of it."
+
+"There, Colonel," said the General, twitching his moustache violently,
+"there it is again. You appear perfectly courteous--but that remark is
+cool contempt. I want you to understand," his tones louder, and
+gesticulations violent, "that you must take my strictures, tell the
+court that they must impose the sentence I direct, and leave conscience
+to me, and no d----d plea of insanity about it."
+
+"General," observed the Colonel, rising, "I am the counsel of the
+prisoner as well as of the United States. I cannot and will not injure
+my own conscience, wrong the prisoner, or humiliate the Government by
+insisting upon a death penalty."
+
+"Read my strictures to the court, and do your duty, sir, or I'll
+court-martial the whole d----d establishment. Go and re-assemble your
+court forthwith."
+
+As he said this he handed a couple of closely written sheets of large
+sized letter-paper, tied with the inevitable red-tape, to the Colonel.
+The Colonel bowed himself out, and the chair in front of the
+pigeon-holes of the camp desk was again occupied by a living embodiment
+of red-tape.
+
+The court was forthwith notified. It immediately met. The strictures
+were read, and in case of many sentences, especially towards the close,
+from necessity re-read by the Judge Advocate. After considerable
+laughter over the document, and some little indignation at the
+unwarranted dictation of "their commanding General," of which title the
+General had taken especial pains to remind them at least every third
+sentence, the court decided not to change the sentence, and directed the
+Judge Advocate to embody their reasons for the character of the
+sentence in his report. The reasons, much the same as those stated to
+the General by the Judge Advocate, were reduced to writing, and duly
+forwarded, with the record signed and attested, to their "commanding
+General." That record, like some other court-martial records of the
+Division, has not since been heard of as far as the Judge Advocate or
+any member of the court is informed. The poor boy a few days afterwards
+entered a hospital, not again to rejoin his regiment. His application
+for discharge has not been heard of. With no prospect of being fit for
+active service--dying by inches in fact,--he is compelled at Government
+expense to follow the regiment in an ambulance from camp to camp, and on
+all its tedious marches.
+
+The profanity in the foregoing chapter has doubtless disgusted the
+reader quite as much as its utterance did the Judge Advocate. And yet
+hundreds of the Division who have heard the General on hundreds of other
+occasions, the writer feels confident will certify that it is rather a
+mild mood of the General's that has been described. The habit is
+disgusting at all times. Many able Generals are addicted to the habit;
+but they are able in spite of it. That their influence would be
+increased without it, cannot be denied. It has been well said to be
+"neither brave, polite, nor wise." But now when the hopes of the nation
+centre in the righteousness of their cause, and thousands of prayers
+continually ascend for its furtherance from Christians in and out of
+uniform, how utterly contemptible! how outrageously wicked! for an
+officer of elevated position, to profane the Name under which those
+prayers are uttered, and upon which the nation relies as its "bulwark,"
+"its tower of strength," a very "present help in this its time of
+trouble."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac--Fitz John's Rail Order--Rails
+for Corps Head-Quarters_ versus _Rails for Hospitals--The Western
+Virginia Captain--Old Rosy, and How to Silence Secesh Women--The Old
+Woman's Fixin's--The Captain's Orderly._
+
+
+Picket duty, while in this camp, was light. Even the little tediousness
+connected with it was relieved by the beautifully romantic character of
+the scenery. Confined entirely to the river front, the companies
+detailed were posted upon the three bluffs that extended the length of
+that front, and on the tow-path of the canal below.
+
+The duty, we have said, was light. It could hardly be considered
+necessary, in fact, were it not to discipline the troops. The bluffs
+were almost perpendicular, varying between seventy-five and one hundred
+feet in height. Immediately at their base was the Chesapeake and Ohio
+canal, averaging six feet in depth. A narrow towing-path separated it
+from the Potomac, which, in a broad, placid, but deep stream, broken
+occasionally by the sharp points of shelving rocks, mostly sunken, that
+ran in ridges parallel with the river course, flowed languidly; the
+water being dammed below as before mentioned.
+
+On one of the most inclement nights of the season, the Company
+commanded by our Western Virginia captain had been assigned the
+towing-path as its station. No enemy was in front, nor likely to be,
+from the manner in which that bank of the river was commanded by our
+batteries. In consequence, a few fires, screened by the bushes along the
+river bank, were allowed. Around these, the reserve and officers not on
+duty gathered.
+
+In a group standing around a smoky fire that struggled for existence
+with the steadily falling rain, stood our captain. His unusual silence
+attracted the attention of the crowd, and its cause was inquired into.
+
+"Boys, I'm disgusted; for the first time in my life since I have been in
+service; teetotally disgusted with the way things are carried on. I'm no
+greenhorn at this business either," continued the captain, assuming, as
+he spoke, the position of a soldier, and although somewhat ungainly when
+off duty, no man in the corps could take that position more correctly,
+or appear to better advantage. "I served five years as an enlisted man
+in an artillery regiment in the United States army, and left home in the
+night when I wasn't over sixteen, to do it; part of that time was in the
+Mexican war. Yes, sir, I saw nearly the whole of that. Since then, I've
+been in service nearly ever since this Rebellion broke out, and the
+hardest kind of service, and under nearly all kinds of officers, and by
+all that's holy, I never saw anything so mean nor was as much disgusted
+as I was to-day. Boys! when shoulder-straps with stars on begin to think
+that we are not human beings, of flesh and blood, liable to get sick,
+and when sick, needing attention like themselves, it's high time those
+straps change shoulders. These damp days we, and especially our sick,
+ought to be made comfortable. One great and good soldier that I've often
+heard tell of, wounded, of high rank, and who lived a long time ago,
+across the ocean, refused, although dying for want of drink, to touch
+water, until a wounded private near him first had drunk. That's the
+spirit. A man that'll do that, is right, one hundred chances to one in
+other respects. We have had such Generals, we have them now, and some
+may be in this corps, but it don't look like it."
+
+"Well, Captain, what did you see?"
+
+"Well, I had sent my Sergeant to get a few rails to keep a poor boy
+comfortable who had a high fever, and who could not get into the
+hospital for want of room. The wood that was cut from the hill was
+green, and the poor fellow had been nearly smoked to death. The Sergeant
+went with a couple of men, and was coming back, the men having two rails
+apiece, when just as they got the other side of the Toll-gate on the
+hill, the Provost-Guard stopped them, told them there was an order
+against their using rails, and they must drop them. It did no good to
+say that they were for a sick man, that was no go. They thought they had
+to do it, and did it. They hadn't come fifty yards toward camp, before
+one of those big six-mule corps-teams that have been hauling rails for
+the last four days, came along, and the rails were pitched into the
+wagon. When I heard of it I was wrothy. I cut a bee-line for the
+Adjutant and got the Order, and there it was in black and white, that no
+more fences--rebel fences--should be destroyed, and no more rails used.
+Now, I knew well that these corps-teams had hauled and hauled until the
+whole establishment, from General Porter down to his Darkies, were in
+rails up to their eyes, and then, when they had their own fill, this
+order comes, and we, poor devils, might whistle. Here were our hospitals
+like smoke-houses, not fit for human beings, and especially the sick. It
+was a little too d----d mean. I couldn't stand it. The more I thought of
+it the madder I got, and I got fighting mad, when I thought how often
+that same General in his kid gloves, fancy rig, and cloak thrown back
+from his shoulders to show all the buttons and stars, had passed me
+without noticing my salute. He never got a second chance, and never
+will. I started off, took three more men than the Sergeant had; went to
+the first fence I could find, and that was about two miles--for the
+corps-teams had made clean work--loaded my men and myself, and started
+back. The Provost-Guard was at the old place; I was bound to pass them
+squarely.
+
+"'Captain,' said the Sergeant, 'we have orders to stop all parties
+carrying rails.'
+
+"'By whose orders?'
+
+"'General Porter's.'
+
+"'I am one of General Porter's men. I have authority for this, sir,'
+said I, looking him full in the eye.
+
+"'Boys, move on!' and on we did move. When the Lieut. saw us filing left
+over the hill towards camp, he sent a squad after us. But it was too
+late. The Devil himself couldn't have had the rails in sight of my
+company quarters, and I told him so.
+
+"'I'll report you to the Division General, and have you
+court-martialed, sir.'
+
+"'Very well,' although I knew the General had a mania for
+courts-martial. 'I have been court-martialed four times, and cleared
+every clip.'
+
+"'Now let that court-martial come; somebody's meanness will see the
+light,' thought I.
+
+"Old Rosy, boys, was the man. I said I was disgusted, but we mustn't get
+discouraged. We have some earnest men--yes, I believe, plenty of them;
+but they're not given a fair show. It'll all come right, though, I
+believe. Men with hearts in them; and Rosy, let me tell you, is no runt
+in that litter.
+
+"'Captain,' said he to me one day when I had gone to his head-quarters
+according to orders, 'I have something that must be done without delay,
+and from what I've seen of you, you are just the man for the work. I
+passed our hospital a few minutes ago, and I thought it was about to
+blaze; the smoke came out of the windows, chimney, doors, and every
+little crack so damnably. I turned around and went in, and found that
+the smoke had filled it, and that the poor fellows were suffering
+terribly. Now, Captain, they have no dry wood, and they must have some
+forth with, and I'll tell you where to get it.
+
+"'The other day I rode by a nest of she-rebels, and found that they had
+cord upon cord of the best hickory piled up in the yard, as if cut by
+their husbands, before leaving, for use this winter. They have made
+provision enough for our hospital too. Now take three army wagons, as
+many men as you need, and go about three miles out the Little Gap Road
+till you come to a new weather-boarded house at the Forks. Make quick
+work, Captain.'
+
+"I did make quick work in getting there, for that was about ten, and
+about half-past eleven the government wagons were in the yard of the
+house and my company in front.
+
+"'We have no chickens,' squalled an old woman from a second-story
+window, 'nor pigs, nor anything--all gone. We are lone women.'
+
+"'Only in the day-time, I reckon,' said my orderly; the same fellow
+that winked at the chaplain. He was one of the roughest fellows that
+ever kept his breath over night. Long, lank, ill-favored, a white
+scrawny beard, stained from the corners of his mouth with tobacco juice;
+but for all, I'd pick him out of a thousand for an orderly. He was
+always there, and his rifle--he always carried his own--a small bore,
+heavy barrel, rough-looking piece, never missed.
+
+"As the old woman was talking from the window, a troop of women, from
+eighteen to forty years old--but I am a better judge of horses' ages
+than women's; they slip us up on that pint too often--came rushing out
+of the door. They made all kinds of inquiries, but I set my men quietly
+to work loading the wood.
+
+"'Now, Captain, you shan't take that wood,' said a well-developed
+little, rather pretty, black-haired woman, but with those peculiar black
+eyes, full of the devil, that you only see among the Rebels, and that
+the Almighty seems to have set in like lanterns in lighthouses to show
+that their bearers are not to be trusted. 'You shan't take that wood!'
+raising her voice to a scream. The men worked on quietly, and I
+overlooked the work.
+
+"'You dirty, greasy-looking Yankee,' said another, 'born in some
+northern poor-house.'
+
+"'And both parents died in jail, I'll bet.'
+
+"'If our Jim was only here, he'd handle the cowardly set in less time
+than one of them could pick up that limb.'
+
+"'You chicken thief, you come by it honestly. Your father was a thief
+before you, and your mother--'
+
+"This last roused me. I could hear nothing bad of her from man or woman.
+
+"'You she-devil,' said I, turning to her, 'not one word more.' She
+turned toward the house.
+
+"But they annoyed the men, and I concluded to keep them still.
+
+"'Sergeant,' said I, addressing the orderly, and nearing the house, the
+women close at my heels. 'Sergeant, as our regiment will camp near here
+to-morrow, we might as well look out for a company hospital. How big is
+that house?'
+
+"'Large enough, Captain; thirty by fifty at least.'
+
+"'How many rooms?'
+
+"'About three, I reckon, on first floor, and I guess the upper story is
+all in one, from its looks through the window. Plenty of room. Bully
+place, and what is more, plenty of ladies to nurse the poor boys.
+
+"The noses of the women not naturally cocked, became upturned at this
+last remark of the sergeant's. But they had become silent, and looked
+anxious.
+
+"'Sergeant, here's paper and pencil, just note down the names of the
+sick, and the rooms we'll put them in, so as to avoid confusion.'
+
+"The sergeant ran the sharp end of the pencil half an inch in his mouth,
+and on the palm of his horny hand commenced the list, talking all the
+while aloud--slowly, just as if writing--'Let me see. My mem'y isn't
+more than an inch long, and there's a blasted lot of 'em.
+
+"'Jim Smith, Bob Riley, Larry Clark, got small-pox; Larry all broke out
+big as old quarters, put 'em in back room down stairs.' The women got
+pale, but small-pox had been common in those parts. 'George Johnson,
+Bill Davis, got the mumps.' 'The mumps, Sally, the mumps, them's what
+killed George, and they're so catchin'--whispered one of the women--and
+continued the sergeant, 'Bill Thatcher, George Clifton the
+chicken-pox.' 'O Lord, the chicken-pox,' said another woman, 'it killed
+my two cousins before they were in the army a week.'--'Put them four,'
+said the sergeant, 'in the middle room down stairs. Save the kitchen for
+cookin', and up stairs put Jim Williams, Spooky Johnson, Tom Hardy, Dick
+Cramer, and the little cook boy; all got the measles.' 'The measles!'
+screamed out half-a-dozen together. 'Good-Lord, we'll be killed in a
+week.' 'They say,' said another black eye, 'that that crack Mississippi
+Brigade took the measles at Harper's Ferry, and died like flies. They
+had to gather them from the bushes, and all over. Brother Tom told me.
+He said our boys were worked nearly to death digging graves.'
+
+"'That was a good thing,' observed the sergeant.
+
+"'You beast!' said the little old woman advancing towards him, and
+shaking her fist in his face.
+
+"'And what will become of us women?' screamed she.
+
+"'A pretty question for an old lady; we calculate that you ladies will
+wait on the sick,' drily remarked the sergeant.
+
+"At this the women, thinking their case hopeless, with downcast looks
+quietly filed into the house.
+
+"The boys by this time had about done loading the teams. All the while I
+had watched the manners of the women closely and the house, and I came
+to the conclusion that it would pay to make a visit inside.
+
+"A guard was placed on the outside, and telling the sergeant and two men
+to follow, I entered. It was all quiet below, but we found when we had
+reached the top of the steps, and stood in the middle of the big room up
+stairs, the women in great confusion, some in a corner of the room, and
+a few sitting on the beds. Among the latter, sitting as we boys used to
+say on her hunkers, with hands clasped about her knees, was the old
+woman. Besides the beds the only furniture in the room was a large,
+roughly made, double-doored wardrobe that stood in one corner.
+
+"We hadn't time to look around before the old woman screeched out--
+
+"'You won't disturb my private fixin's, will you?'
+
+"'I rather think not,' slowly said the sergeant, giving her at the same
+time a comical look.
+
+"Notwithstanding repeated and tearful assurances that there was nothing
+there, that the men had taken off all the arms, hadn't left lead enough
+to mend a hole in the bottom of the coffee-pot, etc., etc., we began to
+search the beds, commencing at one corner. There were two beds between
+us and the old woman's, and although we shook ticks and bolsters, and
+made otherwise close examination, we discovered nothing beyond the
+population usually found in such localities in Western Virginia.
+
+"The old woman was fidgety. Her face, that at two reflections would have
+changed muscatel into crab apple vinegar, was more than usually
+wrinkled. 'O Lord, nothing here,' groaned she, as she sat with her back
+to the head-board. She did not budge an inch as we commenced at her bed.
+
+"The sergeant had gone to the head-board, I to the foot. I saw a twinkle
+in his eye as he turned over the rough comfort, his hand reached
+down--he drew it up gradually, and the old woman slid as gradually from
+the lock to the muzzle of a long Kentucky rifle. 'O Lord,' groaned she,
+as she keeled over on her right side at the foot of the bed.
+
+"A glow of admiration overspread the Sergeant's face as he looked at
+that rifle.
+
+"'Well, I swow, old woman, is this what you call a private fixin'?'
+said the Sergeant. 'A queer bed-fellow you've got; and just look,
+Captain,' said he, trying the ramrod, 'loaded, capped, and half cocked.'
+
+"The heavy manner in which the old lady fell over satisfied me that we
+hadn't all the armory, and I directed her to leave the bed and stand on
+the floor.
+
+"'Can't, can I, Ann?' addressing one of the women.
+
+"'No, marm can't, she is helpless.'
+
+"'Got the rheumatics, had 'em a year and better,' groaned the old woman.
+
+"'Hadn't 'em when you shook your fist under my nose in the yard,' said
+the Sergeant. 'Get off the bed;' catching the old woman by the arm, he
+helped her off. She straightened up with difficulty, holding her clothes
+at the hips with both hands. 'Hold up your hands,' said the Sergeant. He
+was about to assist her, when not relishing that, she lifted them up; as
+she did so, there was a heavy rattling sound on the floor. The old woman
+jumped about a foot from the floor clear out of a well filled pillow
+cushion, dancing and yelling like an Indian. Some hardware must have
+struck her toe and made her forget her rheumatism.
+
+"That bag had two Colt's navy size, two pistols English make, with all
+the trappings for both kinds, and two dozen boxes of best make English
+water proof caps.
+
+"'Old woman,' said the Sergeant with a chuckle, 'your private fixin's as
+you call 'em, are worth hunting for.'
+
+"But the old woman had reached the side of a bed, and was too much
+engaged in holding her toe, to notice the remark.
+
+"The other beds were searched, but with no success. I had noticed while
+the old woman was hopping about a short fat woman getting behind some
+taller ones in the corner and arranging her clothing. The old woman's
+contrivance made me think the corner worth looking at.
+
+"The women sulkily and slowly gave way, and another pillow-case was
+found on the floor, from which a brace of pistols, one pair of long
+cowhide riding boots, three heavy-bladed bowie knives, and some smaller
+matters, were obtained.
+
+"The wardrobe was the only remaining thing, and on it as a centre the
+women had doubled their columns.
+
+"'Oh, Captain, don't,' said several at once beseechingly, 'we're all
+single women, and that has our frocks and fixin's in it,' as I touched
+the wardrobe.
+
+"'As far as I've seed there is not much difference between married
+women's fixin's and single ones,' coolly said the Sergeant.
+
+"'There is not one of us married, Captain.'
+
+"'Sorry for that,' said the Sergeant, leisurely eyeing the women. 'If
+you'd take advice from a Yankee, some of you had better hurry up.'
+
+"The women were indignant, but smothered it, having ascertained that a
+passionate policy would not avail.
+
+"By this time one of the men had succeeded with his bayonet in forcing a
+door. The Sergeant had laid his hand on the door, when a pretty face,
+lit up with those same devilish black eyes, was looking into his half
+winningly, and a pair of small hands were clasping his arm. The
+Sergeant's head gradually fell as if to hear what she had to say, when
+magnetism, a desire to try experiments, or call it what you will, as
+'love,' although said to 'rule the camp,' has little really to do with
+the monotony of actual camp scenes, or the horrors of the field
+itself,--at any rate the Sergeant's head dropped suddenly,--a loud
+smack, followed instantly by the dull sound of a blow,--and the
+Sergeant gently rubbed an already blackening eye, while the woman was
+engaged in drawing her sleeve across her mouth. Like enough some tobacco
+juice went with the sleeve, for the corners of the Sergeant's mouth were
+regular sluices for that article.
+
+"The Sergeant's eye did not prevent him from opening the door, however.
+
+"'Well, I declare, brother Jim's forgot his clothes and sword,' said one
+of the women, manifesting much surprise.
+
+"'Do you call that brother Jim's clothes?' said the Sergeant, grasping a
+petticoat, above which appeared the guard of a cavalry sabre, and
+holding both up to view. 'I tell you it's no use goin' on,' said the
+Sergeant, somewhat more earnestly, his eye may be smarting a little,
+'we're bound to go through it if it takes the hair off.' The women
+squatted about on the beds, down-hearted enough.
+
+"And through it we went, getting five more sabres and belts, and two
+Sharp's rifles complete in that side, and a cavalry saddle, holsters
+with army pistols, bridles, and a rifled musket, in the other side; all
+bran new. There was nothing in the lower story or cellar.
+
+"When I showed Rosy our plunder--and it hadn't to be taken to his tent
+either--when he heard of it, he came out as anxious and pleased as any
+of the boys,--he was a General interested in our luck more than his own
+pay,--he clapped me on the shoulder right before my men, and all the
+officers and men looking on, and said: 'Captain, you're a regular trump.
+Three cheers, boys, for the Captain and company.' And as he started them
+himself, the boys did give 'em, too. 'Captain, you'll not be
+forgotten--be easy on that point.' And I was easy, until a fit of
+sickness that I got put my fortune for the time out of Rosy's hands. The
+men never forgot that trip. The Sergeant often said though, it was the
+only trip he wasn't altogether pleased with, because, I suppose, his
+black eye was a standing joke."
+
+Just then, a sentinel's hail and the reply, "Grand Rounds," "Field
+Officer of the day," hurried the Captain off, and the crowd to their
+posts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_The Reconnoissance--Shepherdstown--Punch and Patriotism--Private Tom on
+West Point and Southern Sympathy--The Little Irish Corporal on John
+Mitchel--A Skirmish--Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and
+Chaplain--Battle of Falling Waters not intended--Story of the Little
+Irish Corporal--Patterson's Folly, or Treason._
+
+
+An old German writer has said that "six months are sufficient to
+accustom an individual to any change in life." As he might fairly be
+supposed to have penned this for German readers and with the fixed
+habits and feelings of a German, if true at all, it ought to hold good
+the world over. As we are more particularly interested in camps at
+present, we venture the assertion that six weeks will make a soldier
+weary of any camp. With our Sharpsburg camp, however, perhaps this
+feeling was assisted by the consciousness so frequently manifested in
+the conversation of the men that the army should be on the move.
+
+Hundreds of relatives and friends had taken advantage of the proximity
+of the camp to a railroad station to pay us a visit, and with them of
+course came eatables--not in the army rations--and delicacies of all
+kinds prepared by thoughtful heads and willing hands at home. Not
+unfrequently the marquees of the officers were occupied by their
+families, who, in their enjoyment of the novelties of camp life, the
+drills, and dress parades of the regiment, treasured up for home
+consumption, brilliant recollections of the sunny side of war. All this,
+to say nothing of the scenery, the shade of the wood, that from the
+peculiar position of the camp, so gratefully from early noon extended
+itself, until at the hour for dress parade the regiment could come to
+the usual "parade rest" entirely in the shade. But the roads were good,
+the weather favorable, the troops effective, and the inactivity was a
+"ghost that would not down" in the sight of men daily making sacrifices
+for the speedy suppression of the Rebellion. The matter was constantly
+recurring for discussion in the shelter tent as well as in the marquees,
+in all its various forms. A great nation playing at war when its capital
+was threatened, and its existence endangered. A struggle in which inert
+power was upon one side, and all the earnestness of deadly hatred and
+blind fanaticism upon the other. An enemy vulnerable in many ways, and
+no matter how many loyal lives were lost, money expended by the
+protraction of the war, but to be assailed in one. But why multiply? Ten
+thousand reasons might be assigned why a military leader, without an
+aggressive policy of warfare, unwilling to employ fully the resources
+committed to him, should not succeed in the suppression of a Rebellion.
+The nation suffered much in the treason that used its high position to
+cloak the early rebel movement to arms, and delayed our own
+preparations; but more in the incapacity or half-heartedness that made
+miserable use of the rich materials so spontaneously furnished.
+
+In the improvement of the Regiment the delay at the Sharpsburg camp was
+not lost. The limited ground was well used, and Company and Battalion
+drills steadily persevered in, brought the Regiment to a proficiency
+rarely noticed in regiments much longer in the field.
+
+"Three days' cooked rations, sixty rounds of ammunition, and under arms
+at four in the morning. How do you like the smack of that, Tom?"
+
+"It smacks of war," says Tom, "and it's high time." The first speaker
+had doffed the gown of the student in his senior year, greatly against
+the wishes of parents and friends, to don the livery of Uncle Sam. One
+would scarcely have recognised in the rough sunburned countenance,
+surmounted by a closely fitting cap, once blue but now almost red, and
+not from the blood of any battle-field--in the course slovenly worn blue
+blouse pantaloons, unevenly suspended, and wide unblacked army shoes,
+the well dressed, graceful accomplished student that commended himself
+to almost universal admiration among the young ladies of his
+acquaintance. The second speaker, thinking that a more opportune war had
+never occurred to demand the silence of the law amid resounding arms,
+had left his desk in an attorney's office, shelved his Blackstone, and
+with a courage that never flinched in the field of strife or in toilsome
+marches where it can perhaps be subjected to a severer test, had
+thoroughly shown that the resolution with which he committed himself to
+the war was one upon which no backward step would be taken. They were
+old friends, and fast messmates. Their little dog-tent, as the shelter
+tents were called, had heard from each many an earnest wish that their
+letters might smell of powder.
+
+The feeling then with which George uttered this piece of news, and the
+joy of Tom as he heard it, can be appreciated.
+
+"What authority have you, George?"
+
+"Old Pigeon-hole's. I heard him, while on duty about his Head-quarters
+to-day, tell a Colonel, that the move had been ordered; that the War
+Department had been getting uncommonly anxious, and that it interfered
+with certain examinations he was making into very important papers."
+
+"I'll warrant it. I would like to see any move in a forward direction
+that would not interfere with some arrangement of his. His moves are on
+paper, and a paper General is just about as valuable to the country as a
+paper blockade."
+
+"Is the movement general?"
+
+"I think it is."
+
+"Of course then it interferes. George, did you ever hear any patriotism
+about those Head-quarters? You have been a great deal about them."
+
+"No, but I have seen a good deal of punch in that neighborhood."
+
+"I'll warrant it--more punch than patriotism. A great state of affairs
+this. There are too many of these half-hearted Head-quarters in the
+army. They ought to be cleaned out, and I believe that before this
+campaign is through it will be done. If it is not done, the country is
+lost."
+
+"Country lost! why of course; that is almost admitted about that
+establishment. They say we may be able to pen them up, and as they don't
+say any more they must think that is about all. I heard a young
+officer--a Regular--who seems to be intimate up there say: that there
+was no use of talking--that men that fought the way the Southerners--he
+didn't use the word Rebels--did, could not be conquered,--that they
+were too much for our men, etc., etc. I could have kicked the
+shoulder-strapped coward or traitor, may be both, but if I had, old
+Pigeon-hole would have had a military execution for the benefit of the
+Volunteers in short order. And then he strutted, talking treason and
+squirting tobacco juice--and all the while our Government supporting the
+scoundrel. West Point was on his outside, but his conversation and
+vacant look told me plainly enough that outside of a Government position
+the squirt had not brains enough to gain a day's subsistence. But he's
+one of Pigey's 'my Regulars,' and to us Volunteers he can put himself on
+his dignity with a '_Procul_, _Procul_, _este Profani_.'"
+
+"George, don't stir me up on that subject any more. I get half mad when
+I think that Uncle Sam's worst enemies are those of his own household.
+We had better anticipate the Captain's order about this in our
+preparations, and not be up half the night."
+
+"Even so, Tom."
+
+George was correct; as to a move at least, for early dawn saw the
+Division and a detachment from another Division, en route to the river.
+There was the usual quiet in the camps along which they passed, showing
+that George was mistaken as to the move being general. The troops
+marching through a winding and wooded defile, passed the deservedly well
+known Brigade of General Meagher. "Here's Ould Ireland Boys," said the
+little Irish Corporal, pointing, as his face glowed with pride, to the
+flag adorned with "The Harp of Ould Ireland, and the Shamrock so green,"
+the emblems of the Emerald Isle.
+
+"Their General is an Irishman thrue to the sod, none of your rinegade
+spalpeens like John Mitchel--fighting for slave-holders in Ameriky, and
+against the Lords and Dukes in Ould Ireland, and the slave-holders as
+Father Mahan tould me the worst of the two, more aristocratic,
+big-feeling, and tyrannical than the English nobility. He said, too,
+that the blackguard could never visit the ould sod again unless he
+landed in the night-time, and hid himself by day in a bog up to his
+eyes, and even then the Father said he believed the blissed mimory of
+St. Patrick,
+
+          'Who drove the Frogs into the Bogs,
+          And banished all the Varmint,'
+
+would clean him out after the rist of the varmin."
+
+"Three cheers for the Irish Brigade" greeted the Corporal's remarks.
+
+The troops crossed with difficulty and delay at the only ford--and
+wondered with reason at the activity of the Rebels in having transported
+across not only their army and baggage, but hundreds if not thousands of
+their dead and wounded. The road winding around the high rocks on the
+Virginia side, must have been in more peaceful times a favorite drive
+for the gentry of the neighborhood. Shepherdstown itself adorns a most
+commanding position. On the occasion of this Union visit its inhabitants
+appeared intensely Secesh. Not so in the early history of the rebellion;
+when Patterson's column "dragged its slow length along" through the
+valley of the Shenandoah. Scouting parties then saw Union flags from
+many a window. True, they streamed from dwellings owned by the
+merchants, mechanics, and laborers, the real muscle of the country; but
+this was true of most of the towns of the Border States, and more early
+energetic action in affording these classes protection would have
+secured us the aid of their strong hands. As it was, these resources
+were in great measure frittered away--gradually drawn by what appeared
+an irresistible influence into the vortex of the Rebellion--or scattered
+wanderingly through the Loyal States, and worn down and exhausted in the
+support of dependent and outcast families.
+
+Sharpsburg was greatly altered. The yellow Rebel Flag designated almost
+every other building as a Hospital. Their surgeons in grey pompously
+paraded the streets. As the troops marched through, they were subjected
+to almost every description of insult. One interesting group of Rebel
+petticoated humanity standing in front of premises that would not have
+passed inspection by one of our Pennsylvania Dutch housewives, held
+their noses by way of showing contempt.
+
+"Guess you have to do that, about them diggins. When did you scrub
+last?" said a bright-eyed officer's servant, whom a few years' service
+as a news-boy had taught considerable shrewdness.
+
+To annoy others "My Maryland" and "John Brown" were sung by the men.
+Around a toll-house at the west end of town, occupied by an old lady
+whose husband had been expelled with a large number of other patriotic
+residents, had congregated some wives of exiled loyal husbands, who were
+not afraid to avow their attachment for the old Union, by words of
+encouragement and waving of handkerchiefs. They were backed by a reserve
+force of negroes of both sexes, whose generous exhibition of polished
+ivories, to say the least, did not represent any great displeasure at
+the appearance of the troops.
+
+"There are the Reserves," said one of the boys, pointing to where the
+negroes stood.
+
+"Yes, and if they were called in the issue of this Rebellion would be
+speedy and favorable," said a Captain in musical tones, "and I can't
+think but that this costly child's play will drive the nation into their
+use much sooner than many expect. Let them understand that they are the
+real beneficiaries of this war, and they will not stay their hands. And
+why shouldn't we use them? 'They are one of the means that God and
+nature have placed in our hands,' and old Virginia can't object to that
+doctrine."
+
+"But, Captain," said his First Lieutenant, "would you fight alongside of
+a darkie?"
+
+"Would you drive a darkie away if he came to assist you in a struggle
+for life?"
+
+"Yes, but we have men enough without their aid."
+
+"You forget, Lieutenant, that, as matters now are, we have them fighting
+against us."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"They raise the crops that feed the Rebel army. They are just as much,
+perhaps not as directly, but just as really fighting against us as the
+founders who cast their cannon. And as to fighting alongside of them,
+they may have quite as many prejudices against fighting alongside of us.
+There is no necessity of interfering with either. Organize colored
+regiments; appoint colored line officers if efficient, and white field
+and staff officers, until they attain sufficient proficiency for
+command. As to their fighting qualities, military records attest them
+abundantly. The shrewd 'nephew of his uncle' has used them for years."
+
+The earnest argument of the Captain made a deep impression upon the men.
+The desperation of our case, depressed finances, heavy hospital lists,
+and many other causes, independently of abstract justice, are fast
+removing that question beyond the pale of prejudice.
+
+A halt was ordered, and the men rested on the sward that bordered the
+hard pike, and in the immediate neighborhood of the village cemetery. It
+was literally crowded with graves, many of them fresh. Large additions
+had been made from surrounding fields, and they too were closely taken
+up by ridges covering the dead of Antietam.
+
+The surrounding country had suffered little from the ravages of war.
+Visited occasionally by scouting parties--principally cavalry--of both
+sides, there had been none of the occupation by large bodies of troops,
+which levels fences, destroys crops, and speedily gives the most fertile
+of countries the seeming barrenness of the desert. The valley had a
+reputation that ran back to an ante-Revolutionary date for magnificence
+of scenery and fertility of soil. Washington, with all the enthusiasm of
+ardent youth, paid it glowing encomiums in his field-notes of the
+Fairfax surveys. In later times, when the destinies of our struggling
+colonies rested upon his ample shoulders, the leaders of the faction
+opposed to him--for great and good as he was, he had jealous, bitter,
+and malignant enemies--settled a few miles beyond Shepherdstown, at what
+has since been known as Leetown. The farms, with few exceptions, had
+nothing of the slovenly air, dilapidated, worn-out appearance, that
+characterized other parts of Virginia. Upon inquiry we found that the
+large landowners were in the habit of procuring tenants from the lower
+counties of Pennsylvania, and that the thrift and close cultivation were
+really imported. In the course of time these tenants, with their
+customary acquisitiveness, became landowners themselves, and their farms
+were readily distinguishable by the farm buildings, and particularly by
+the large substantial red bank barns.
+
+The troops moved on to a wood, skirting either side of the road, and
+were thrown into line of battle. The country was gently rolling, and the
+woods in front that crowned the summit of the low ridges were shelled
+before advancing. Occasionally Rebel horsemen could be seen rapidly
+riding from one wood to another, making observations from some
+commanding point.
+
+In line of battle by Brigade, flanked by skirmishers, the advance was
+made. To the troops this, although toilsome, was unusually exciting.
+Through woods, fields of corn whose tall tops concealed even the mounted
+officers, and made the men, like quails in standing grain, be guided by
+the direction of the sound of the command, rather than by the touch of
+elbows to the centre,--over the frequent croppings out of ledges of
+rock, through the little streams of this plentifully watered country,
+the movement slowly progressed. They had not advanced far when a shell
+screamed over their heads, uncomfortably close to the Surgeon and
+Chaplain, some fifty yards in the rear, and mangled awfully a straggler
+at least half a mile further back. As may be supposed, his fate was a
+standing warning against straggling for the balance of the campaign.
+
+Notwithstanding further compliments from the rebels, who appeared to
+have our range, a roar of laughter greeted the dexterity with which the
+Chaplain and Surgeon ducked and dismounted at the sound of the first
+shell. Of about a size, and both small men, they fairly rolled from
+their horses. The boys had it that the little Dutch Doctor grabbed at
+his horse's ear, or rather where it ought to have been; as the horse was
+formerly in the Rebel service, and was picked up by the Doctor after the
+battle of Antietam, minus an ear, lost perhaps through a cut from an
+awkward sabre, and missing it fell upon his hands and knees in front of
+the horse's feet.
+
+As the shells grew more frequent and direct in range, the men were
+ordered to halt and lie down. The field officers dismounted, and were
+joined by the Chaplain and Doctor leading their horses.
+
+"Colonel, I no ride that horse," said the Doctor, sputtering and
+brushing the dust off his clothes.
+
+"Why not, Doctor?"
+
+"Too high--very big--" touching the top of the shoulder of the bony
+beast, and almost on tip-toe to do it, "had much fall, ground struck me
+hard," continued he, his eyes snapping all the while.
+
+"Well, Doctor," remarked one of the other field officers, "we have told
+you all along that if you ever got in range with that horse, your life
+would hardly be worth talking about."
+
+"They not know him," anxiously said the Doctor.
+
+"Of course they know him. He has the best and plainest ear-mark in the
+world."
+
+"Pretty close shoot that, anyhow."
+
+The result of this conversation was, that in the further movement the
+Doctor led his horse during the day.
+
+The firing ceased with no damage, save the bruises of the Doctor, and
+those received by our tonguey little Corporal, who asserted that the
+windage of a shell knocked him off a fence. As he fell into a stone
+heap, it is more than probable that he had some good reason for the
+movement--besides, why cannot Corporals suffer from wounds of that kind,
+frequently so fashionable among officers of higher grade?
+
+The onward movement was resumed. In the course of half an hour the
+cannonading again opened, interspersed with occasional volleys of
+musketry. The rattling of musketry became incessant. Advancing under
+cover of rocky bluffs, the shells passed harmlessly over the Brigade. We
+soon ascertained that the Rebels had made a stand at a point where our
+advance, from the character of the country, necessarily narrowed into
+the compass of a strip of meadow-land. Here a brigade of Rebel infantry
+were drawn up in line of battle. Their batteries posted on a neighboring
+height, were guided by signals, the country not admitting of extended
+observation. The contest was brief. The gleam of the bayonets as they
+fell for the charge, broke the Rebel line, and they retired in
+considerable confusion to the wood in their rear. Our batteries soon
+shelled them from those quarters, and the advance continued--the
+skirmishers of both sides keeping up a rattling fire. Some Rebel
+earthworks were passed, and late in the afternoon the track of the
+Baltimore and Ohio railroad was crossed. The Rebels, before leaving, had
+done their utmost to complete the destruction of that much abused road.
+At intervals of every one hundred yards, piles of ties surmounted by
+rails were upon fire. These were thrown down by our men. About half a
+mile beyond the road, in a finely sodded valley, the troops were halted
+for the night, pickets posted, and the men prepared their meals closely
+in the rear of their stacks. The night was a pleasant one. An open air
+encampment upon such a night is one of the finest phases of a soldier's
+life. Meals over, the events of the day were discussed, or such matters
+as proved of interest to the different groups.
+
+One group we must not pass unnoticed. The majority lounged lazily upon
+the grass, some squatted upon their knapsacks, while a large stone was
+given by common consent to a tall, fine-looking Lieutenant, the
+principal officer present.
+
+"Corporal," said he, addressing the little Irish Corporal, "do you know
+how near we are to Martinsburg?"
+
+"Faith I don't, Lieutenant."
+
+"I do not know the exact distance myself, but we are not over three or
+four miles from the road that we took when we guarded the ammunition
+train from Martinsburg to Charlestown."
+
+"Oh, it's the ould First ye are spaking about, is it? Ov coorse I
+ricollect Martinsburg, and the markit-house where I guarded the fifty
+nagurs that Gineral Patterson had ordered to be arrested for having
+stripes on their pantaloons, Uncle Sam's buttons on their caps, and
+belts with these big brass U. S. plates on. Oh, but it was a swate
+crowd. The poor divils were crowded like cattle on cars, and it was one
+of the hot smothering nights. I couldn't help thinkin', that by and by,
+if our armies didn't move faster, the nagurs would have little trouble
+gettin' into uniforms. They have a nat'ral concate about such things.
+One poor fellow rolled the whites of his eyes awfully, and almost cried
+when I ordered him out of his red breeches."
+
+"The day has not come yet, and need not," rejoined the Lieutenant, "if
+our generals do their duty. Don't you recollect how we were hurried from
+Frederick, and after marching seven miles out of the way, made good time
+for all to Williamsport--how bayonets appeared to glisten upon every
+road leading into the town; and then our crossing the river, the band
+all the while playing 'The Star-spangled Banner,' and the march we made
+to Martinsburg, passing over the ground where the battle of Falling
+Waters had but a few days before been fought? If that battle had been
+followed up as it should have been, Johnson would never have reached
+Bull Run."
+
+"Be jabers! do you know, Lieutenant, that that fight was all a mistake
+upon our part? Shure, our ginerals niver intended it."
+
+A laugh, with the inquiry "how he knew that?" followed.
+
+"Didn't I hear a Big Gineral, that I was acting as orderly for while in
+Martinsburg--for they made orderlies of corporals thim days--tell a
+richly-dressed old lady, 'That it was our policy to teach our misguided
+Southern brethren, by an imposing show of strength, how hopeless it
+would be to fight against the Government.' The lady said, 'That would
+save much bloodshed, would become a Christian nation, and would return
+them as friends to their old way of thinking. 'Yes, madam!' said the
+Gineral, 'there is no bitter feeling in our breasts,' clasping his
+breast. 'The masses south will soon see their country surrounded by
+volunteers in great numbers, and that the war, if protracted, must
+involve them all in ruin. When the war is over, madam, fanatics on both
+sides can be hung.'
+
+"'That was a dreadful affair at Falling Waters, General,' said the lady,
+with a strange twinkle in her eyes.
+
+"'Yes, madam,' replied the General, coloring up to his ears, 'a blunder
+of some of our volunteer officers. Ordinary military prudence made us
+send forward some force to reconnoitre before crossing the main army.
+These troops were to fall back if the enemy appeared in force. Not
+understanding their orders, or carried away by the excitement of the
+moment, they engaged the enemy with the unfortunate results to which you
+allude.'
+
+"Av it would have been proper for a corporal, I would have asked the
+Gineral what Johnny Reb would do while we were taching him all that.
+Thim's the Gineral's exact words, for I paid particular attention. I put
+them thegither with what I had heard from a Wisconsin boy, and I got the
+whole history of that fight."
+
+"Let's have it," shouted the crowd, now considerably increased, "at
+once!"
+
+"Well, you see, they were sent forward to reconnoitre, as the Gineral
+said, and there was a Wisconsin regiment of bear hunters and the like,
+and a Pennsylvania regiment of deer hunters and Susquehannah raftsmen
+pretty well forward. These Wisconsin chaps, in dead earnest, brought
+their rifles along all the way from Wisconsin, and, like the
+Susquehannah fellows, they couldn't kape hands off the trigger if there
+was any game about.
+
+"Well, they got to Falling Waters without stirring up anything; you
+recollect, Lieutenant, where that rebel officer's house was burned down,
+and then the battery that was along with them, seeing some
+suspicious-looking Grey Backs dodging in and out of a wood, let them
+have a few round of shells just to see whether they were in force or
+not, according to orders. The Rebs made tracks for a low piece of ground
+behind a ridge, and then formed line of battle. Our men, with a yell,
+went forward, and when they saw the Rebs in line, these two Colonels,
+thinking they had been sent out to fight, and that their men didn't
+carry guns for nothing, ordered them to fire; and then they ordered them
+to load again, in order to relave their hips as much as possible from
+the load of ammunition; and then they fired again; and then, gittin'
+excited, and thinkin' this work too slow, and that it wouldn't do to
+take such bright bayonets home, they ordered a charge, and cheering,
+yelling, and howling, our boys went at the Rebs. The Rebs didn't stand
+to meet them, but fell back behind a barn. The batteries burned
+that,--and then they tried to form line again, but no use. As soon as
+our fellows gave the yell, they were off like all possessed. They had
+prepared to run by tearing the fences down; and then it was trying to
+form line, and breaking as soon as our fellows howled a little, all the
+way for five long miles to Martinsburg; and the last our boys saw of the
+Rebs was their straight coat-tails at the south end of the town. And
+that was the whole battle of Falling Waters; and may be Ould Patterson
+wouldn't have got to Martinsburg if them Colonels had reported the Rebs
+in force, and not got excited.
+
+"But how did you hear all this? You forget that part of it."
+
+"And couldn't you let that go? I thought I could concale that.
+
+"Well, you know, Lieutenant, our ould Colonel boarded at the Brick
+Hotel, along the Railroad, above where the long strings of locomotives
+were burned, as the Gineral says, by our 'misguided southern friends;'
+and I was about there considerably on duty. One afternoon, a
+jolly-looking little chap, one of the Wisconsin boys, and one after my
+own heart--and he proved it, too, by trating me to several drinks--came
+along with a Rebel Artillery officer's coat under his arm. And we looked
+at the coat, and talked and drank, and drank and talked, until the
+Wisconsin chappy put it on, just to show me how the Rebel officer looked
+in it. It was a fine grey, trimmed with gold lace and scarlet, and the
+Wisconsin chappy looked gay in it, barring the sleeves were several
+inches too long, and the waist buttons came down nearly a foot too far,
+and it was too big round the waist. And he showed me after every drink
+what he did and what the Officer did,--and, to tell the plain truth, we
+got a drop too much,--and the Wisconsin chappy got turning back-hand
+springs against the side of the hotel, and I tried to do the same, to
+the great sport of the crowd. But it didn't last long. A corporal's
+guard took--or rather carried--us to the guard-house, and towards
+morning, when we sobered up, he tould me the whole story."
+
+"Pretty well put together, Terry."
+
+"And the blissed truth, ivery word of it."
+
+The night was wearing away--work before them in the morning--and the
+group dispersed for their blankets, from which we will not disturb them
+until the succeeding chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_Reconnoissance concluded. What we Saw and What we didn't See, and what
+the Good Public Read--Pigeon-hole Generalship and the Press--The
+Preacher Lieutenant and how he Recruited--Comparative Merits of Black
+Union Men and White Rebels--A Ground Blast, and its effect upon a
+Pigeon-hole General--Staff Officers Striking a Snag in the Western
+Virginia Captain--Why the People have a right to expect active Army
+Movements--Red Tape and the Sick List--Pigeon-holing at Division
+Head-quarters._
+
+
+In the misty morning arms were taken and the forward resumed. Occasional
+Rebel corpses passed showed the work of our sharpshooters. In a short
+time the ground again prevented the movement in line of battle, and the
+troops marched by the flank over a road well wooded on each side, until
+they reached what proved to be the farthest point made by the
+reconnoissance--a large open plateau, bounded on the north and west by a
+wooded ridge to which it gradually rose, and which was said to border
+the Oppequan. On the south, at an average distance of five hundred yards
+from the road, was a strip of timber land. Slightly west by south, but
+upon the north side of the road, was a rise of ground, in the rear of
+which, but upon the south side of the road, were a farmer's house and
+out-buildings. The troops pursued their march until the head of the
+column arrived opposite the house. Suspicious-looking horsemen were
+discovered on the edge of the woods that crowned the ridge. The order
+was given that the troops should leave the road and take cover on its
+south side, a position not commanded by the ridge. The order was not
+executed before a Rebel officer, on a white-tailed dun horse, the tail
+particularly conspicuous against the dark background of the wood, was
+observed signalling to the extreme right of what was now supposed to be
+the Rebel line. Almost instantly some half a dozen pieces of artillery
+were placed in position, at various points on the brow of the circular
+ridge, completely commanding, in fact flanking our position. Our troops,
+however, were not disturbed, although every instant expecting a salute
+from the batteries, as the range was easy and direct. While the troops
+were being placed in position behind the house the batteries were posted
+on the rise. A few hours passed in this position. The Rebel batteries in
+plain view, horsemen continually emerging and disappearing in the wood.
+Was it the force that we had driven before us? or were the Rebels in
+force upon that ridge, making the Oppequan their line of defence? Better
+ground upon which to be attacked could not be chosen. The long distance
+to be traversed under fire of any number of converging batteries, would
+have slaughtered men by the thousands. But again, if the Rebels were in
+force, why did they not attack us? Outflanking us was easy. With a
+superior force our retreat could easily be intercepted, and if we
+escaped at all, it would be with heavy loss. Their batteries threatened,
+but no firing. All was quiet, save the noise made by the men in
+stripping an orchard in their immediate front, and the commands of their
+officers in ordering them back to the ranks.
+
+The quiet was provoking, and all manner of discussion as to the Rebel
+force, movements, etc., was indulged in. Many contended that they were
+but threatening--others, that they were in force, that was their line of
+defence, and the plateau in front their battle-ground. This decision the
+General in command seems to have arrived at, as the flaming telegrams in
+the Dailies, in the course of a day or two, announced that the Rebels
+were discovered in great force, strongly posted in a most defensible
+position. After the lapse of an hour or two, the order for the homeward
+march was given, and strange to say, that although marching by the flank
+the last man had disappeared from their view, behind the cover of the
+wood, before they opened fire. They then commenced shelling the woods
+vigorously, and continued firing at a respectful distance, doing no
+damage, until night set in. In the course of the afternoon it commenced
+raining, and continued steadily throughout the night. The troops
+encamped for the night in Egyptian darkness, and what was worse, in a
+meadow fairly deluged with water.
+
+"Well, what does all this mean?" inquired one of a crowd, huddled
+together, hooded by blanket and oil-cloth, protecting themselves as best
+they could from the falling rain, for sleep was out of question to all
+but the fortunate few who can slumber in puddles.
+
+"What does it all mean, Charlie? Why it means a blind upon Uncle Abraham
+and his good people. That's what it means."
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, I am surprised that a man of your usual reserve and
+correct conversation, should talk in that style about our commander."
+
+"Sergeant, it is high time that not only individuals, whether reserved
+or not, but the people at large should denounce this delay that is
+wearing out the life of the nation. Weeks have passed since the battle
+of Antietam, and after repeated urgings on the part of the President,
+and repeated promises on the part of our commander, we have this
+beggarly apology for a movement. Yes, sir, apology for a movement.
+To-morrow's Dailies will tell in flaming capitals, how the Rebels were
+posted in large force in a strong position, and in line of battle upon
+the Oppequan, intimating thereby that further delay will be unavoidable
+to make our army equal to a movement. Now this humbugging an earnest
+people is unfair, unworthy of a great commander, and if he be humbugged
+himself again as with the Quaker guns at Manassas, the sooner the
+country knows it the better for its credit and safety. How can any
+living man tell that the batteries we saw to-day upon the ridge, are not
+the batteries we drove before us yesterday? The probability is that they
+are."
+
+The speaker, as intimated by the Sergeant, was a man of reserve, quiet,
+and to the last degree inoffensive in his manner. A professing
+Christian, consistent in, and not ashamed of his profession, he had the
+respect of his command, and a friend in every acquaintance in the
+regiment. Educated for the ministry, he threw aside his theological text
+books on the outbreak of the Rebellion, and bringing into requisition
+some earlier lessons learned at a Military Academy, he opened a
+recruiting list with the zeal of a Puritan. It was not circulated, as is
+customary, in bar-rooms, but taking it to a rural district, he called a
+meeting in the Township Church, and in the faith of a Christian and the
+earnestness of a patriot, he eloquently proclaimed his purpose and the
+righteousness of the war. Success on a smaller scale, but like that of
+Peter the Hermit, followed his endeavor, and his quota of the Company
+was soon made up by the enlistment of nearly every able-bodied young man
+in the Township. His recruits fairly idolized him, and in their rougher
+and more unlettered way, were equally earnest advocates of the
+suppression of the Rebellion by any and every means.
+
+"Your Abolitionism will crop out from time to time, like the ledges of
+rock in the country we have just been passing through," said a Junior
+Lieutenant.
+
+"Call it Abolitionism, or what you will," replied his Senior. "I am for
+the suppression of the Rebellion by the speediest means possible. I am
+for the abolition of everything in the way of its suppression."
+
+"You would abolish the Constitution, I suppose, if you thought it in the
+way."
+
+"I would certainly amend the Constitution, had I the power, to suit the
+exigencies of the times. What is the Constitution worth without a
+country for it to control?"
+
+"There it comes. Anything to ease the nigger."
+
+"Yes, sir, I thank God that this Rebellion strikes a death-blow at
+slavery. That wherever a Federal bayonet gleams in a slave State, we can
+see a gleam of eternal truth lighting up the gloom of slavery. The
+recent Proclamation of the President was all that was needed to place
+our cause wholly upon the rock of God's justice, and on that base the
+gates of the hell of slavery and treason combined, shall not prevail
+against it."
+
+"Preaching again, Lieutenant," said our Western Virginia Captain, who
+was the Lieutenant's Senior officer, as he strolled leisurely toward the
+crowd. "I tell you, Lieutenant, if Old Abe don't make better
+preparations to carry out his Proclamation, he had better turn Chinese
+General at once."
+
+"Give him time, Captain. January 1 may bring preparations that we little
+dream of. At any rate, it places us in a proper position before the
+world. What ground had we to expect sympathy from the anti-slavery
+people of Europe, when we made no effort to release the millions
+enslaved in the South from bondage?"
+
+"As far as using the negroes as soldiers is concerned, it seems a day
+behind the fair. It should have been issued earlier. Why, we could have
+had them by thousands in Western Virginny, and officers in our regiment,
+who were with him, tell me that Patterson could have mustered an army of
+them. Instead of that they were driven from his lines, and when they
+brought him correct information as to the Rebels at Winchester, it was
+'don't believe the d----d nigger,' and all this while he dined and wined
+with the Rebel nabobs about Charlestown. Boys, we commenced this war
+wrong. I'm a Democrat, and always have been one; but I'm not afraid to
+say that we've all along been trying our best to make enemies of the
+only real friends we have inside of Rebel lines. Now, I don't like the
+nigger better than some of my neighbors; but in my opinion, a black
+Union man is better than a white Rebel any day. To say nothing of their
+fighting, why don't our Generals use them as servants, and why are they
+not our teamsters and laborers? Look at our able-bodied men detailed for
+servants about Pigeon-hole's Head-quarters."
+
+"Well, Captain," interrupted the Sergeant, "Pigey has a big
+establishment, and see if the papers don't make him out a big General
+for this daring reconnoissance."
+
+"This daring tomfoolery! If he'd come back to old Rosecrans with his
+story about a few pieces of artillery posted on a ridge, Rosy would want
+to know why the d----l he didn't find out what was behind them."
+
+"He showed great experience a few weeks ago," continued the Sergeant,
+"when the Western fellows let off one of their ground blasts. 'Where did
+that shell explode?' inquired Pigey, galloping up with his staff and
+orderlies to our Regimental Head-quarters. 'I heard no shell,' says the
+Colonel. 'Nor I,' says the Lieut.-Colonel. 'I did hear a ground blast,'
+said the Lieut.-Colonel, 'such as the boys in the Regiment below
+occasionally make from the rebel cartridges they find.' 'Ground blast!
+h--l!' says the General, excitedly, his eyes flashing from under his
+crooked cocked hat: 'Don't you think that an officer of my experience
+and observation would be able to distinguish the explosion of a shell
+from that of a ground blast?' 'No shell exploded, General,' said the
+Colonel, 'within the limits of my regiment.' 'The d----l it
+didn't--would you have me disbelieve my own ears? Now, I have issued
+orders enough about permitting these unexploded shells to lie about, and
+I purpose holding the Colonels responsible for all damage. Suppose that
+explosion was heard at corps head-quarters, as it doubtless was, and the
+inquiry is made from what quarter the rebels threw the shell, what reply
+am I, as the commanding General of this division, to make?'
+
+"'Tell them that it was a ground blast,' said a Second Lieutenant,
+politely saluting. 'I have just been down and saw the hole it made.'
+
+"'You saw the hole! and just below here! The d----l you did! D--n the
+ground blasts!' and the General turned his horse's head and started
+towards division head-quarters at a full gallop, followed by his
+grinning staff."
+
+"He's not to blame so much, boys," remarked the Captain. "He was a quiet
+clerk in the Topographical Department when the war broke out, I've been
+told, and I've no doubt he dusted the pigeon-holes in his charge
+carefully, and folded the papers neatly. When McClellan looked about for
+material to fill up his big staff with, who was so well calculated to
+attend to the topography of his battle-fields, considering that he
+fought so few, and most of those he had to fight on the Peninsula, the
+rebels got next day, as our Division General. Now, as Little Mac is not
+particularly noted for close acquaintance with rebel shells, the General
+has had small chance of knowing what kind of noise they do make when
+they burst. His great blunder, or rather, the Government's, is his
+taking command of a division, if it has but two brigades. I heard a
+Major say he had greatness thrust upon him. He's a small man in a big
+place. West Point has turned out some big men, like Rosecrans, Grant,
+Hooker, and many others that are a credit to the country--men of genuine
+talent, who have none of those foolish prejudices, that the regulars are
+the only soldiers, and that volunteers are a mere make-shift, that can't
+be depended upon. And West Point, like all other institutions, has had
+its share of small men, that come from it with just brains enough to
+carry a load of prejudice against volunteers and the volunteer service,
+and a very little knowledge of the ordinary run of military matters. An
+officer of real ability will never be a slave to prejudice. These small
+men are the Red-Tapists of the army--the Pigeon-Hole-Paper Generals, and
+being often elevated and privileged unduly, because they are from West
+Point, they play the very devil in their commands. Our corps commander,
+who was a teacher there, has brought a full share of the last kind into
+the corps.
+
+"I wander about a good deal among other camps of this corps, pick up
+information and make myself acquainted without standing on ceremony. I
+never wait for that. I always had a habit of doing it, and I honestly
+believe, from what I see and hear, there has been a studied effort, from
+some high commander, to teach these young regular officers
+treason,--yes, boys, treason,--because when a man tells me that we can't
+conquer the Rebels, and that after a while we'll have to make peace,
+etc., I set him down for a traitor; he is aiding and abetting the
+enemies of his country. If that ain't treason I'd like to know what is."
+
+"The Captain headed off a lot of young regulars the other evening a
+little the prettiest," said the Sergeant.
+
+"Let's have it!" said a dozen in the crowd, now considerably increased.
+
+"The Captain," continued the Sergeant, "had asked me to take a walk with
+him after dress-parade, and we strolled along the Sharpsburg road
+towards Corps Head-quarters. As we got just beyond the house and barn
+where the Rebel wounded are, we came upon a crowd of officers,
+commissioned and non-commissioned, and some privates. A quite young
+officer, with a milk-and-water face and a moustache like mildew on a
+damp Hardee, was talking very excitedly about the Administration not
+appreciating General McClellan; that there wasn't intellect enough there
+to appreciate a really great military genius; that European officers
+praised him as our greatest General, and that even the Rebel officers
+said that they feared him more than any of our Commanders; and yet all
+the while the Abolition Administration tied his hands and fettered his
+movements, and all because Little Mac wasn't crazy enough to say that
+the Rebels could be subjugated and their armies exterminated, as some
+fanatical Regulars and nearly all the Volunteer officers pretend to say.
+'Now, I believe,' said the officer, thrusting his thumbs between his
+armpits and his vest, and puffing out his breast pompously, 'I believe,
+as Little Mac says, 'we can drive them to the wall;' we can lessen the
+limits of their country; but, gentlemen, after all, there will have to
+be a peace.'
+
+"I thought," said the Sergeant, "the Captain was going to break in upon
+him here. He threw back his cap till the rim was on top of his head,
+rammed his hands into his pockets, and edged his way a little further
+into the crowd, towards the speaker; but he didn't, and the speaker went
+on to say:
+
+"'There are the people, too, crazy about a forward movement. Why don't
+they come down and shoulder muskets themselves?'
+
+"The Captain could hold in no longer. He drew his hands out of his
+pockets, straightened them along his side, like a game rooster
+stretching his wings just before a fight, and sidling up to the officer,
+looking at him out of the corner of his eye, he burst out--
+
+"'Why don't they shoulder muskets themselves? I'll tell you
+why,--because we are here to do it for them. They have sent us, they pay
+us, and they've a right to talk, and I hope they will talk. Anything
+like a decent forward movement of this Corps would have saved the
+disgrace of the second Bull Run battle. We all know how the Corps lagged
+along the road-side, and the Rebel cannon all the while thundering in
+the ears of its Commander.'
+
+"'A Volunteer officer, I suppose,' said the young officer, somewhat
+sneeringly. 'Where have you ever seen service?'
+
+"'Yes, sir, a Volunteer officer,' said the Captain straightening up,
+facing full the officer, and eyeing him until his face grew paler.
+'Where have I seen service? In Mexico, as private in the 4th Regular
+Artillery, while you were eating pap with a spoon, you puppy! You had
+better have stayed at that business; it was an honest one, at any rate,
+and Uncle Sam would have been saved some pay that you draw, while, like
+a dishonest sneak, you preach treason.'
+
+"'How dare you insult a Regular officer?' said a gold-striped, dandified
+fellow, as he twisted the ends of his moustache into rat-tails.
+
+"'Who the d----l are you?' said the Captain, turning on him so suddenly
+that the officer commenced to back; 'with your gold lace on your
+shoulders that may mean anything or nothing. What are you anyhow?
+Captain? Lieutenant? Clerk? or Orderly? Those straps are a good come
+off, boys.' The crowd laughed. 'I suppose he thinks he's a staff
+officer.'
+
+"'I am, and a Lieutenant in the Regular army,' said the officer angrily,
+and giving the word 'Regular' the full benefit of his voice.
+
+"'Regular and be d----d,' retorted the Captain. 'I want you both to
+understand that I am a Captain in the Volunteer service of the United
+States; that that service is by Act of Congress on a footing with the
+Regular service, and that I'll always talk in this style when I hear
+treason. I am the superior officer of you both, and have a right to talk
+to you. I've been in service since the Rebellion broke out, and by the
+mother of Moses, I never heard treason preached by officers in Uncle
+Sam's uniform till I got into this Corps. It makes my blood boil, and I
+won't stand it. Pretty doctrine you are trying to teach these soldiers;
+but I know by their faces they understand the matter better than you,
+and you can't do them any damage.' 'That's so,' sang out several of the
+crowd. 'You fellows all talk alike. I have heard dozens of you talk in
+the same way, and I believe your ideas are stocked from a higher source.
+There is something wrong in the head of this Grand Army of the Potomac.
+The way it's managed, grand only in reviews.'
+
+"'We shall report you, sir,' said the Rat-tailed Moustache, 'for
+speaking disrespectfully of your superior officers.'
+
+"'Report as quick as you please. About that time you'll find another
+report at the War Department, against two Regular Lieutenants, for
+speaking discouraging and disloyal sentiments.'
+
+"'A Volunteer officer would stand a big chance at the Department making
+a complaint against Regulars,' said the officer, as they both backed out
+of the crowd, followed by a couple of non-commissioned officers and
+privates.
+
+"'You d----d butterflies,' roared the Captain after them. 'I'll bet ten
+dollars to one that you only stayed in service when the war broke out,
+because you thought you could trust greenbacks better than Confederate
+scrip.'
+
+"'You shall hear from us,' replied Rat-tail, as they walked on.
+
+"'Am ready to hear from both at once now, you cowardly sneaks,' sang out
+the Captain. 'Don't believe you ever smelt powder, or ever will, if you
+can help it.'
+
+"'Boys,' said the Captain, who had the sympathies of the crowd that
+remained strongly with him. 'These shallow-brained fellows and some
+older ones that wear stars, that havn't head enough to cut loose from
+the Red-tape prejudice against us Volunteers, are a curse to the Army of
+the Potomac. Is it any wonder that this Grand Army, burdened with
+squirts of that stripe, is a burlesque and a disgrace to the country for
+its inefficiency. In the West, where Regular officers, unprejudiced, go
+hand in hand with Volunteers, we make progress. But what's the use of
+talking, the body won't move right if the heart's rotten.'
+
+"'True as preachin',' said one of the men, and the sentiment seemed
+approved by the crowd, as we gradually took up the homeward step."
+
+"Has the Sergeant told 'the whole truth,' and nothing but the truth?"
+inquired a Lieutenant, a lawyer at home, of the Captain.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the Captain firmly, "and I'll stick by the whole of
+it, and a good deal more."
+
+"Well, I've been slow about believing many statements that I have
+heard," continued the Lieutenant; "but to-day I heard some facts from a
+Colonel in the Second Brigade that fairly staggered me. His Regiment,
+through some Red-tape informality, has been without tents. In
+consequence, considerable sickness, principally fever, has prevailed.
+Some time ago he made a request to Division Head-quarters, for
+permission to clean out and use the white house that stands near his
+Regiment, and that, until lately, was full of wounded rebels, as a
+hospital. Corps Head-quarters must be heard from. After considerable
+delay, the men in the meanwhile sickening and dying, the request was
+denied. The sickness, through the rains, increased, and the application
+was renewed with like success. The owner, who was a Rebel sympathizer,
+was opposed, and other like excuses, that in the urgency of the case
+should not have been considered at all, were given. The sickness became
+alarming in extent. The Regiment was entirely without shelter, save that
+made from the few pine boughs to be had in the neighborhood. The Colonel
+took some boards that the rebels had spared from the fence surrounding
+the house, and with them endeavored to increase the comfort of the men.
+In the course of a day or two, a bill was sent to him from
+Head-quarters, with every board charged at its highest value, with the
+request to pay, and with notice that in failure of immediate payment the
+amount would be charged upon his pay-roll. This treatment disgusted the
+Colonel, who is a gentleman of high tone and the kindliest feelings, and
+angered by the heartlessness that denied him proper shelter for his
+sick, now increased to a number frightfully large, with a heavy share of
+mortality, he cut red-tape, sent over a detail to the house, had it
+cleansed of Rebel filth, and filled it with the sick. The poor fellows
+were hardly comfortable in their new quarters, before an order came from
+Division Head-quarters for their immediate removal.
+
+"'I have no place to take them to; they are sick, and must be under
+shelter,' was the Colonel's reply.
+
+"'The Commanding General of the Division orders their instant removal,'
+was the order that followed.
+
+"'The Commanding General of Division must take the responsibility of
+their removal on his own head,' was the spirited reply of the Colonel.
+
+"That evening towards sunset, the second edition of Old Pigeon, 'Squab,'
+as the boys called him, rode up with the air of 'one having authority,'
+and in a conceited manner informed the Colonel that the General
+commanding the Division had directed him to place him under arrest. Now
+these things I know to be facts. I took pains to inform myself."
+
+The Lieutenant's story elicited many ejaculations of contempt for the
+heartlessness of some in high places; but they were cut short by the
+Captain's stating that he knew the circumstances to be true, and that
+Old Pigeon stated the Colonel should wait for his hospital tents, the
+requisition for which had been sent up months before. It was shelved in
+some pigeon-hole, and the Colonel was to stand by and see his men sicken
+and die, while a rebel farmer's house near by would have saved many of
+them.
+
+"But we're in for it, boys. No use of talking. Obedience is lesson No. 1
+of the soldier, and you know that we must not 'mutter or murmur' against
+our Commanding General, which position Old Pigey so often reminds us he
+holds. The old fellow half suspects that if he didn't, we'd forget it
+from day to day; for Lord knows there is nothing about the man but his
+position to make any one remember it. Now I am determined to have some
+sleep."
+
+"Sleep! such a night as this?" said one of the crowd.
+
+"Of course; we'll need it to-morrow, and an old soldier ought to be able
+to sleep anywhere, in any kind of weather."
+
+The Captain left. There was a partial dispersing of the crowd, but many
+a poor fellow shivered in that pelting rain the night long.
+
+The morning found the enemy at a respectful distance, and the homeward
+route was quietly resumed. Late in the afternoon the advance entered
+Shepherdstown. At this time the rear was shelled vigorously, and as the
+troops continued their passage through the town cavalry charges were
+made upon both sides. That only ford was again crossed, and the evening
+was well advanced ere the troops regained their camps.
+
+A day later, and the Dailies, through their respective reporters, told
+an astonished public how the brilliant and daring reconnoissance had
+discovered qualities of great generalship in a man who but a short time
+before had figured as a quiet literary man in the seclusion of an
+office.
+
+"And, be jabers," said our little Irish Corporal, on hearing it read,
+"Uncle Sam would have gained by paying him to stay in that office."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_Departure from Sharpsburg Camp--The Old Woman of Sandy Hook--Harper's
+Ferry--South sewing Dragon's Teeth by shedding Old John's Blood--The
+Dutch Doctor and the Boar--Beauties of Tobacco--Camp Life on the
+Character--Patrick, Brother to the Little Corporal--General Patterson no
+Irishman--Guarding a Potatoe Patch in Dixie--The Preacher Lieutenant on
+Emancipation--Inspection and the Exhorting Colonel--The Scotch Tailor on
+Military Matters._
+
+
+October was drawing to a close rapidly, when, at last, after repeated
+false alarms, the actual movement of the army commenced. No one, unless
+himself an old campaigner, can appreciate the feelings of the soldier at
+the breaking up of camp. Anxious for a change of scenery as he may be,
+the eye will linger upon each familiar spot, the quarters, the parade
+ground, and rocky bluff and wooded knoll, until memory's impress bears
+the lasting distinctness of a lifetime. Those leaving could not banish
+from their minds, even if disposed, the thought that, although but a
+temporary sojourn for them, it had proved to be the last resting-place
+of many of their comrades. The hospital, more dreaded than the field,
+had contributed its share to the mounds that dotted the hills from the
+strife of Antietam.
+
+          "There is not an atom of this earth
+          But once was living man--"
+
+was a day dream, doubtless, of the poetic boy of eighteen; but how
+suggestive it becomes, when we consider how many thousands and hundreds
+of thousands of mounds rising upon every hill in the border States,
+attest devotion to the cause of the Union, or treason, in this foulest
+of Rebellions.
+
+The route lay, after passing the village of Sharpsburg, through a narrow
+valley, lying cosily between the spurs of two ridges that appeared to
+terminate at the Ferry. On either hand the evidences of the occupation
+of the country by a large army were abundant. Fences torn down, ground
+trampled, and fields destitute of herbage. The road bordering the canal,
+along which is built the straggling village of Sandy Hook, was crowded
+with the long wagon trains of the different Corps. A soldier could as
+readily distinguish the Staff from the Regimental wagons, as the Staff
+themselves from Regimental officers. The slick, well fed appearance of
+the horses or mules of Staff teams, usually six in number, owing to
+abundance of forage and half _loaded_ wagons, were in striking contrast
+with the four half fed, hide-bound beasts usually attached to the
+overloaded Regimental wagons. Order after order for the reduction of
+baggage, that would reduce field officers to a small valise apiece,
+while many line officers would be compelled to march without a change of
+clothing, did not appear to lessen the length of Staff trains. That the
+transportation was unnecessarily extensive, cannot be doubted. That the
+heaviest reduction could have been made with Head-quarter trains, is
+equally true.
+
+"Grey coats one day and blue coats the next," said an old woman clad in
+homespun grey, who came out of a low frame house as the troops slowly
+made their way past the teams through the village of Sandy Hook.
+
+"Right on this rock is where General Jackson rested hisself," continued
+the old woman.
+
+"Were there many Rebs about?" inquired one of the men.
+
+"Right smart of them, I reckon;" replied the old woman; "but Lord! what
+a lookin' set of critters. Elbows and knees out; many of them hadn't
+shoes, and half of them that had had their toes out. You boys are
+dandies to them. And tired too, and hungry. Gracious! the poor fellows,
+when their officers weren't about, would beg for anything almost to eat.
+Why, my daughter Sal saw them at the soap-fat barrel! They said they
+were nearly marched and starved to death. And their officers didn't look
+much better. Lord! it looks like a pic-nic party to see you blue coats,
+with your long strings of wagons, and all your other fixins. You take
+good care of your bellies, the way you haul the crackers and bacon. Old
+Jackson never waits for wagons. That's the way he gets around you so
+often."
+
+"Look here, old woman," roared out one of the men, "you had better dry
+up."
+
+"Yes, and he'll get around you again," continued the old woman in a
+louder key. "You think you're going to bag him, do you. You're some on
+baggin'; but he'll give you three days' start and beat you down the
+valley. They acted like gentlemen, too, didn't touch a thing without
+leave, and you fellows have robbed me of all I have."
+
+"They were in 'My Maryland,' and wanted to get the people all straight,"
+suggested one of the boys.
+
+The old lady did not take the hint, but kept on berating the fresh men
+as they passed--taunting them by disparaging comparison with the Rebel
+troops. A neighbor, by informing them of the fact of her having two
+sons in the Rebel service, imparted the secret of her interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And there is the Ferry, so often pictured, or attempted to be, by pen
+and pencil. Either art has failed, and will fail, to do justice to that
+sublimely grand mountain scenery. Not quite three years ago, an iron old
+man, who perished with the heroism of a Spartan, or rather, to be just,
+the faith of a Christian; but little more than a year in advance of the
+dawn of the day of his hope, centred upon this spot the eyes of a
+continent. A crazy fanatic, was the cry, but--
+
+          "Thy scales, Mortality, are just
+          To all that pass away."
+
+Time will reveal that it was not the freak of a madman, but rather a
+step in the grand progress of universal emancipation, and that Old John
+had foundations for his purposed campaign, quite as substantial as those
+upon which better starred enterprises have succeeded.
+
+"Lor, Massa, if Old John had only had these men," said a wench to one of
+Patterson's Captains, as he paused for a few moments while drilling his
+command at Charlestown, during that fruitless campaign, so formidable in
+preparation, and so much more disgraceful than that of Old John in its
+termination, for the latter, in his dying heroism, won the admiration of
+a world.
+
+"Why, what could Old John have done with them?" replied the Captain.
+
+"Golly, Massa," said the wench, with a knowing grin; "he would have
+walked right through Virginny, and he'd have had plenty of help too. I
+knows, many a nigger about here that didn't say nuthin', would have
+jined him."
+
+"Why didn't they join him?"
+
+"Lor, Massa, they didn't know it in time. Hadn't any chance. Massa
+wanted us to go see him hung; but only the youngsters went. We colored
+pussons neber forget Old John. No sah!"
+
+The men wound their way as best they could beneath the precipitous and
+towering rocks of the Maryland Heights, through the teams that blocked
+up the road, and a short distance above the Railroad Bridge, filed to
+the left, and crossed upon the pontoons. As they passed the Engine
+House, the utmost endeavors of the officers could not prevent a bulge to
+the right, so great was the anxiety to see the scene of Old John's
+heroic but hopeless contest. Denounced by pro-slavery zealots as a
+murderer, by the community at large as a fanatic, who fifty years hence
+will deny him honorable place in the list of martyrs for the cause of
+eternal truth!
+
+The town itself was almost a mass of ruins; both sides, at various
+stages of the war, having endeavored to effect its destruction. Another
+pontoon bridge was crossed, bridging the Shenandoah--sparkling on its
+rocky bed--the _Dancing Water_, as termed by the Aborigines, with their
+customary graceful appropriateness. To one fond of mountain scenery, and
+who is not? the winding road that follows the Shenandoah to its
+junction, then charmingly bends to the course of the Potomac, is
+intensely interesting. But why should an humble writer weary the
+reader's patience by expatiating upon scenery, the sight of which
+Jefferson declared well worth a visit across the Atlantic, at a day when
+such visits were tedious three month affairs, and uncertain at that? War
+now adds a bristling horror to the shaggy mountain tops, and from the
+hoarse throats of heavy cannon often "leap from rock to rock the
+beetling crags among" well executed counterfeits of "live thunder."
+
+The Potomac is followed but a short distance, the road winding by an
+easy ascent up the mountain ridge, and descending as easily into a
+narrow and fruitful valley. In this valley, four miles from the Ferry, a
+halt was ordered, and the Division rested for the night and succeeding
+day, in a large and well sodded field.
+
+"Gentlemen," said our Brigadier, in a sly, good-humored way, as he rode
+up to the field officers of the Regiment, "the field upon which you are
+encamped, and all the land, almost as far as you can see, on the left of
+yon fence, belong to a Rebel now holding the rank of Major in the Rebel
+service. All I need say, I suppose, gentlemen," and the General left to
+communicate the important information to the other Regiments of the
+Brigade. As a fine flock of sheep, some young cattle, a drove of porkers
+that from a rear view gave promise of prime Virginia hams, and sundry
+flocks of chickens, had been espied as the men marched into the field,
+the General's remarks were eminently practical and suggestive.
+
+"Charlie, what's the state of the larder?" said the Major, with his
+usual thoughtfulness, addressing the cheerful mess cook.
+
+"Some boiled pork and crackers. Poor show, sir!" Such fare, after a hard
+day's march, in sight of a living paradise of beef, mutton, pork, and
+poultry, would have been perfectly inexcusable; and forthwith, the
+Major, "the little Dutch Doctor," and a short, stoutly-built Lieutenant,
+all armed to the teeth, started off to reconnoitre, and ascertain in
+what position the Rebel property was posted. As they went they canvassed
+the respective merits of beef, mutton, pork and poultry, until a short
+grunt from a porker, as he crossed the Doctor's path, ended the
+discussion. The Major and Lieutenant cocked their pistols, but withheld
+firing, as they saw the Doctor prostrate, holding by both hands the hind
+leg of a patriarch of the flock.
+
+"Oh, Heavens! we don't want that old boar!" cried out at once both the
+Major and Lieutenant.
+
+"Goot meat, make strong, goot for health, very," said the Doctor,
+holding on with the grasp of a vice, while the boar fairly dragged him,
+face to the ground, "after the manner of all creeping things." The
+Doctor was in a fix. Help his companions would not give. He could not
+hold the boar by one hand alone. After being considerably bruised, he
+was compelled to release his hold, to his intense disgust, which he
+evinced as he raised himself up, puffing like a porpoise, by
+gesticulating furiously, and muttering a jargon in which the only thing
+intelligible was the oft-repeated word, "tam." A well-directed shot from
+the Major, shortly afterwards, brought down a royal "Virginia mutton,"
+as the camp phrase is. Another from the Lieutenant grazed the rear of a
+fine young porker's ham; but considerable firing, a long chase, and many
+ludicrous falls occurred, before that pig was tightly gripped between
+the legs of the Lieutenant.
+
+The expedition was so successful that the aid of some privates was
+called in to help carry to quarters the rich spoils of the chase. As for
+the Doctor,--after the refusal of assistance in his struggle, he walked
+homeward in stately but offended dignity, and shocked the Chaplain, as
+he was occasionally in the habit of doing, by still muttering "tam."
+
+A person enjoying the comforts of home, testy as to the broiling of a
+mutton-chop perhaps, for real, unalloyed enjoyment of appetite should
+form one of a camp circle, toasting, at a blazing fire, as the shades
+of evening gather round, steaks freshly cut with a camp-knife from flesh
+that quivered with remaining life but a moment before, assisting its
+digestion by fried hardees, and washing both down by coffee innocent of
+cream. That is a feast, as every old campaigner will testify; but to be
+properly appreciated a good appetite is all essential. To attain that,
+should other resources fail, the writer can confidently recommend a
+march, say of about fifteen miles, over rough or dusty roads.
+
+And then, as the appetites of the men are sated by the hardy provender
+of Uncle Sam, varied, as in this instance, by Virginia venison, and they
+respectively fall back and take to
+
+          "Sublime Tobacco! glorious in a pipe;"
+
+what more pleasant than the discussion of the doings of the day, or of
+the times, the recital of oft-repeated and ever-gaining yarns, or the
+heart-stirring strains of national ballads, while each countenance is
+lit with the ever-varying glow of the fire.
+
+Upon this evening not only Head-quarters but the Regiment was exultant
+in the feast upon the fat of a rebellious land. To add to their comfort
+several large stacks of hay and straw had been deprived of their fair
+proportions, and preparations had been made for the enjoyment of rest
+upon beds that kings would envy, could they but have the sleepers' sound
+repose.
+
+The morrow had been set apart as a day of rest--a fact known to the
+Regiment, and their fireside enjoyment was accordingly prolonged.
+
+The camp, more than any other position in life, develops the greatest
+inconsistencies in poor human nature. The grumbler of the day's march is
+very frequently the joker of the bivouac. The worse, at the expense of
+man's better qualities, are rapidly strengthened, and the least particle
+of selfishness, however concealed by a generous nature at the period of
+enlistment, fearfully increases its power with every day of service. The
+writer remembers well a small, slightly-built, bow-legged fellow, who
+would murmur without ceasing upon the route, continually torment his
+officers for privilege to fall out of ranks to adjust his knapsack,
+fasten a belt, or some such like purpose, who, on the halt, would amuse
+his comrades for hours in performing gymnastic feats upon out-spread
+blankets. Another, who at home flourished deservedly under the sobriquet
+of "Clever Billy," became, in a few brief months of service, the most
+surly, snappish, and selfish of his mess.
+
+Pipe in mouth, their troubles are puffed away in the gracefully
+ascending smoke. Many a non-user of the weed envies in moody silence the
+perfect satisfaction resting upon the features of his comrade thus
+engaged. Non-users are becoming rare birds in the army. So universal is
+the habit, that the pipe appears to belong to the equipment, and the
+tobacco-pouch, suspended from a button-hole of the blouse, is so
+generally worn that one would suppose it to have been prescribed by the
+President as part of the uniform.
+
+The crowd gathered about the Head-quarters had largely increased, and
+while luxuriating upon the straw, time passed merrily. The Colonel, who
+never let an opportunity to improve the discipline of his command pass
+unimproved, seized the occasion of the presence of a large number of
+officers to impress upon them the necessity of greater control of the
+men upon the march. The easy, open, but orderly route-step of the
+Regulars was alluded to--their occupying the road alone, and not spread
+out and straggling like a drove of cattle. A stranger seeing our
+Volunteers upon the march would not give them credit for the soldierly
+qualities they really possess. Curiosity, so rampant in the Yankee,
+tempts him continually to wander from the ranks to one or other side of
+the road.
+
+"Well, Colonel," said a tall Lieutenant, "the Regulars look prim and
+march well, but they have done little fighting, as yet, in this Army of
+the Potomac."
+
+"You forget the Peninsula," replied the Colonel.
+
+"Oh, there they were caught unexpectedly, and forced into it. In this
+Corps they are always in reserve; and that's what their officers
+like,--everything in reserve but pay and promotion. It is rather
+doubtful whether they will fight."
+
+"Ov coorse they'll fight," said the little Irish Corporal, half rising
+from his straw on the outskirts of the crowd; "Ov coorse they will.
+They're nearly all my own countrymen. I know slathers of them; and did
+you iver in your born days know an Irishman that wouldn't fight,
+anywhere, any time, and for anything, if he had anybody to fight?"
+
+"And a quart of whiskey in him," interrupts the Adjutant. "As Burns says
+of the Scotch--
+
+          "'Wi' Tippeny they fear nae evil,
+          Wi' Usquebagh they'll face the Devil.'"
+
+"Now, don't be comparing an Irishman, if you plaze, Adjutant, to a
+scratch-back Scotchman. The raal Irishman has fire enough in his bluid;
+but there's no denying a glass of potheen is the stuff to regulate it.
+Talk about Rigulars or Volunteers fighting;--it's the officers must do
+their duty, and there's no fear thin of the men."
+
+"What did you enlist for, anyway, Terence?" broke in a Second
+Lieutenant.
+
+"It's aisy seeing that it wasn't for a Lieutenant's pay," retorted
+Terence, to the amusement of the crowd, and then, as earnestness
+gathered upon his countenance, he continued: "I enlisted for revinge,
+and there's little prospect of my seeing a chance for it."
+
+"For revenge?" said several.
+
+"Yis, for revinge. I had worked early and late at a liv'ry stable, like
+a nagur, to pay the passage money of my only brother to this country.
+Faith, he was a broth of a boy, the pride of all the McCarthy's,"--tears
+welled in his eyes as he continued,--"just three years younger than
+mysilf, a light, ruddy, nately put togither lad as iver left the bogs;
+and talk about fightin'!--the divil was niver in him but in a fight, and
+thin you'd think he was all divil. That was Patrick's sport, and fight
+he would, ivery chance, from the time whin he was a bit of a lad, ten
+years ould, and bunged the ould schoolteacher's eyes in the parish
+school-house. Will, he got a good berth in a saloon in the Bowery, where
+they used Patrick in claning out the customers whin they got noisy, and
+he'd do it nately too, to the satisfaction of his employer. He did well
+till a recruiting Sergeant--bad luck to him--that knew the McCarthys in
+the ould country, found him out, and they drank and talked about ould
+times, and the Sergeant tould him that the army was the place for
+Irishmen,--that there would be lots of fightin'. The chance of a fight
+took Patrick, and nixt day he left the city in a blouse, as Fourth
+Corporal in an Irish Rigiment, and a prouder looking chappie, as his own
+Captain tould me, niver marched down Broadway. And thin to think he was
+murthered by my own Gineral."
+
+"Who? How was that?" interrupted half a dozen at once.
+
+"Gineral Patterson, you see, to be shure."
+
+"Why, Terence," broke in the Lieutenant, "you shouldn't be so hard upon
+General Patterson; he's of an Irish family."
+
+"The Gineral an Irishman! Niver! Of an Irish family! must have been
+hundreds of years back, and the bluid spoiled long before it got into
+his veins, by bad whiskey or something worse. It takes the raal potheen,
+that smacks of the smoke of the still, to keep up the bluid of an
+Irishman. Rot-gut would ruin St. Patrick himself if he were alive and
+could be got to taste it. Gineral Patterson an Irishman! no, sir; or
+there would have been bluidy noses at Bunker's Hill or Winchester, and
+that would have saved some at Bull Run."
+
+"On with your story, Terence," said the crowd.
+
+"Beggin' your pardon, there's no story about it,--the blissid truth,
+ivery word of it.
+
+"Will, you see, while our ould Colonel, under the Gineral's orders, had
+me guarding a pratie patch--"
+
+"Set an Irishman to guard a potato patch!" laughed the Second
+Lieutenant.
+
+"It wasn't much use," said Terence, smiling, "for they disappeared the
+first night, and the slim college student that was Sergeant of that
+relief was put under guard for telling the officer of the guard, next
+morning, that there had been a heavy dew that night, and it evaporated
+so fast that it took the praties along. We lived on praties next day,
+but the poor Sergeant had to foot the bill.
+
+"Well, as I was going on to say, while I was helping guard a pratie
+patch, an ice-house, corn-crib, smoke-house, and other such things that
+were near our camp ground, and that belonged to a Rebel Colonel under
+Johnston;--Johnston himself was staling away with all his army to help
+fight the battle of Bull Run. Patrick--pace to his sowl--was in that
+battle and fought like a tiger, barrin' that he would have done better,
+as his Captain tould me, if he hadn't forgot the balls in his
+cartridge-box, and took to his musket like a shelaleh all day long.
+Patrick's regiment belonged to a Brigade that was ordered to keep
+Johnston in check, and there stood Patrick in line, like a true lad as
+he was, clubbing back the Butternuts, striking them right and
+left--maybe the fellows belonged to this same Rebel Colonel's
+regiment--until a round shot struck him full in the breast, knocking the
+heart out of as true an Irishman as iver lived, and killing dead the
+flower of the McCarthys.
+
+"I didn't know it till we got to Baltimore, and thin whin I riflicted
+how the poor boy marched up to fight the bluidy Rebels, and how they
+killed him, my own brother, while I--I, who would have given my right
+hand to save him,--yis," said Terence, rising, and tears streaming from
+his eyes, "would have waded through fire and bluid to help the darlin',
+the pride of his mother,--I was guarding a Rebel Colonel's property,
+whin the whole of us, if we had fought Johnston, as we ought to have
+done, might have kept him back and saved our army, and that would have
+saved me my brother. And thin whin I remimbered how thick the Gineral
+was with the Rebel gentry, and how fine ladies with the divil in their
+eyes bowed to him in Charlestown, and spit at and cocked up their noses
+at us soldiers, while their husbands were off, maybe, murthering my
+brother; and how the Gineral, proud as a paycock on his prancing
+chestnut sorrel, tould us in the meadow that Johnston was too strong
+for us to attack, but that if he would come out from behind his big guns
+the Gineral would lay his body on the sod before he'd lave it, whin he
+intended his body to lie on a soft bed the rest of his life, and how he
+said and did all this while our men, and my brother among them, were
+being murthered by this same Johnston that he was sent to hould back,--I
+couldn't keep down my Irish bluid. I cursed him and all his tribe by all
+the Saints from St. Peter to St. Patrick, until good ould Father Mahan
+tould me, whin I confessed, that he was afraid I would swear my own sowl
+away, and keep Patrick in Purgatory; and the Father tould me that I
+should lave off cursin' Patterson, for the Americans thimselves would
+attend to that, and take to fighting the Rebels for revinge; and he said
+by way of incouragement that at the same time I'd be sarving God and my
+adopted country. And here I am, under another safe Commander. Four
+months and no fight,--nearly up to the ould First, that sarved three
+months without sight of a Rebel, barrin' he was a prisoner, or in
+citizen dress, like some we have left behind us."
+
+"Boys, Terence tells the truth about Patterson's movements," said the
+tall Lieutenant. "The day before we left we were ordered to be ready to
+move in the morning, with three days' cooked rations. We were told that
+our Regiment was assigned a place in the advance, and it was
+semi-officially rumored that a flank attack would be made upon
+Winchester. At this day the whole affair appears ridiculous, as Johnston
+had at that very time left Winchester, leaving only a trifling show of
+force, and he never, at his best, had a force equal to Patterson's. Half
+of his troops were the raw country militia. But we under-officers were
+none the wiser. It was rumored that Bill McMullen's Rangers had found
+charts that informed the General of the extent and strength of the Rebel
+works and muster-rolls, that showed his force to be over 50,000. That
+those works had no existence to the extent alleged, and that the
+muster-rolls were false, are now well known. But that night it was all
+dead earnest with us. Rations were cooked and the most thorough
+preparations made for the expected work of the morrow. Sunrise saw the
+old First in line, ready for the move. Eight o'clock came; no move,
+Nine--Ten, and yet no move. Arms had been stacked, and the men lounged
+lazily about the stacks. Eagle eyes scanned the surrounding country to
+ascertain what other Brigades were doing. At length troops were seen in
+motion, but the head of the column was turned towards the Ferry. 'What
+does this mean?' was the inquiry that hastily ran from man to man; and
+still they marched towards the Ferry. By and by an aide-de-camp directed
+our Brigade to fall into the column, and we then discovered that the
+whole army was in line of march for the Ferry, with a formidable
+rear-guard to protect it from an enemy then triumphing at Bull Run.
+
+"Well, Patterson's inertness, to speak of it tenderly, cost the country
+much blood, millions of money, and a record of disgrace; but it gave a
+Regiment of Massachusetts Yankees opportunity to whittle up for their
+home cabinets of curiosities a large pile of walnut timber which had
+formed John Brown's scaffold, and to make extensive inroads in prying
+with their bayonets from the walls of the jail in which he had been
+confined pieces of stone and mortar. Guards were put upon the Court
+House in which old John heard his doom with the dignity of a Cato, at an
+early date, or it would have been hewn to pieces. A fine crop of corn
+in full leaf was growing upon the field of execution, and for a space of
+ten feet from the road-side the leaves had been culled for careful
+preservation in knapsacks. The boys had the spirit. Their Commander
+lacked capacity or will to give it effect. A beggarly excuse was set up
+after the campaign was over,--that the time of service of many of the
+Regiments was about expiring, and that the men would not reënlist,--not
+only beggarly, but false. The great mass volunteered to remain as it
+was, with no prospect of service ahead. All would have stayed had the
+General shown any disposition for active work, or made them promise of a
+fight."
+
+"Golly," said a tall, raw-boned Darkie, showing his ivories to a crowd
+of like color about him, as the fine band of the Fencibles played in
+front of the General's Head-quarters. "Dese Union boys beat de
+Mississippi fellurs all hollur playing Dixie."
+
+Hardly a face was to be seen upon the streets, but those of these
+friendly blacks. They thronged about the camps, to be repulsed by
+stringent orders at all quarters. Property they were, reasoned the
+commander, and property must be respected. And it was; even pump handles
+were tied down and placed under guard. Oh! that a Ben Butler had then
+been in command, to have pronounced this living property contraband of
+war, and by that sharp dodge of a pro-slavery Democrat, to have given
+Uncle Sam the services of this property. Depend upon it, that would have
+ended campaigning in the valley of the Shenandoah, that store-house of
+Rebel supplies, as it has turned out to be; supplies too, gathered and
+kept up by the negroes that Patterson so carefully excluded from his
+lines.
+
+"And would have saved us this march," says the Colonel, "a goose chase
+at any rate."
+
+"Yes, and had the policy of using the negro been general at the
+commencement of this Rebellion, troops would not be in the field at this
+day," responded the Lieutenant.
+
+"Why do they not now, come boldly out and acknowledge that slavery is a
+curse to any nation?" said the Preacher Lieutenant. "It caused the
+Rebellion, and its downfall would be the Rebellion's certain and speedy
+death. Thousands of years ago, the Almighty cursed with plagues a proud
+people for refusing to break the bonds of the slave. The day of miracles
+is past. But war, desolating war, is the scourge with which He punishes
+our country. The curse of blood is upon the land; by blood must it be
+expiated. We in the North have been guilty, in common with the whole
+country, in tolerating, aiding, and abetting the evil. We must have our
+proportion of punishment. Why cannot the whole country meet the issue
+boldly as one man, and atone for past offence by unanimity in the
+abolition of the evil?"
+
+"On the nigger again," said his Junior Lieutenant, assuming, as he
+spoke, an oratorical attitude. "Why do you not go on and talk about them
+working out their own salvation, with muskets on their shoulders and
+bayonets by their sides, and with fear and trembling too, I have no
+doubt it would be. Carry out your Scripture parallels. Tell how the
+walls of Jericho fell by horns taken from the woolly heads of rams; but
+now that miracles are no more, how the walls of this Jericho of Rebeldom
+are destined to fall before the well-directed butting of the woolly
+heads themselves. You don't ride your hobby with a stiff rein to-night,
+Lieutenant."
+
+The taunting air and strained comparison of the Lieutenant enlivened the
+crowd, but did not in the least affect the Senior, who calmly replied:
+
+"If our Government does not arm the negro on the basis of freedom, the
+Rebels in their desperation will, and although we have the negro
+sympathy, we may lose it through delay and inattention, and in that
+event, prepare for years of conflict. The negroes, at the outset of this
+Rebellion, were ripe for the contest. Armies of thousands of them might
+have been in the field to-day. Now the President's Proclamation finds
+them removed within interior Rebel lines, and to furnish them arms, will
+first cost severe contests with the Rebels themselves."
+
+The toil of the day and the drowsiness caused by huge meals, gradually
+dispersed the crowd; but the discussion was continued in quarters by the
+various messes, until their actual time of retiring.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Inspection! inspection!" said the Adjutant, on the succeeding
+afternoon, to the Lieutenant-Colonel for the time being in command of
+the Regiment, handing him, at the same time, an order for immediate
+inspection. "Six inspections in two weeks before marching," continued
+the Adjutant, "and another after a day's march. I wonder whether this
+Grand Army of the Potomac wouldn't halt when about going into battle, to
+see whether the men had their shoe-strings tied?"
+
+The Adjutant had barely ceased, when the Inspecting officer, the ranking
+Colonel of the Brigade, detailed specially for the duty, made his
+appearance. He was a stout, full-faced man of fifty or upwards, with an
+odd mixture in his manner of piety and pretension. Report had it that
+his previous life had been one of change,--stock-jobber, note-shaver,
+temperance lecturer, and exhorter--
+
+          "All things by turns, and nothing long."
+
+The latter quality remained with him, and it was a rare chance that he
+could pass a crowd of his men without bringing it into play. His
+"talks," as the boys called them, were more admired than his tactics,
+and from their tone of friendly familiarity, he was called by the
+fatherly title of "Pap" by his Regiment, and known by that designation
+throughout the Brigade.
+
+The Regiment was rapidly formed for inspection, and after passing
+through the ranks of the first Company, the Colonel pompously presented
+himself before its centre, and with sober tones and solemn look,
+delivered himself as follows:
+
+"Boys, have your hearts right," the Colonel clapping, at the same time,
+his right hand over his diaphragm. "If your hearts are right your
+muskets will be bright." The men stared, the movement not being laid
+down in the Regulations, and not exactly understanding the connexion
+between the heart and a clean musket; but the Colonel continued, "the
+heart is like the mainspring of a watch, if it beats right, the whole
+man and all about him will be right. There is no danger of our failing
+in this war, boys. We have a good cause to put our hearts in. The Rebels
+have a bad cause, and their hearts cannot be right in it. Good hearts
+make brave men, brave men win the battles. That's the reason, boys, why
+we'll succeed."
+
+"Can't see it!" sang out some irreverent fellow in the rear rank.
+
+The Colonel didn't take the hint; but catching at the remark continued,
+"You do not need to see it, boys, you can feel whether your heart is
+right." This provoked a smile on the faces of the more intelligent of
+the officers and men, which the Colonel noticed. "No laughing matter,
+boys," he said emphatically, at the same time earnestly gesticulating,
+"your lives, your country, and your honor depend upon right hearts." And
+thus the old Colonel exhorted each Company previous to its dismissal,
+amusing some and mystifying others. The heart was his theme, and time or
+place, a court-martial or a review, did not prevent the introduction of
+his platitudes.
+
+Said the Major, after inspection, "The Colonel, in the prominence he
+gives the heart in its control of military affairs, rather reverses a
+sentiment I once heard advanced by a little Scotch tailor, who had just
+been elected a militia colonel."
+
+"Let's have it, Major," said the Adjutant.
+
+"The little Scotchman," continued the Major, "had been a notorious
+drunkard and profane swearer. Through the efforts of a travelling
+Evangelist, he became converted and joined a prominent denomination. His
+conversion was a remarkable instance, and gave him rapid promotion and a
+prominent position in the church. While at his height, through some
+scheme of the devil, I suppose, he was elected colonel of militia. The
+elevation overcame him. Treat he must and treat he did, and to satisfy
+the admiring crowd in front of the bar drank himself, until reason left,
+preceded by piety, and his old vice of profanity returned, with
+seven-fold virulence. He was discovered by a brother of the church,
+steadying himself by the railing of the bar, and rehearsing, amid
+volleys of oaths, the fragments that remained in his memory of an old
+Fourth of July speech. 'Brother,' said his fellow church-member, as he
+gently nudged his arm. 'Brother!' in a louder key, and with a more
+vigorous nudge, 'have you forgotten your sacred obligations to the
+church, your position as a--'
+
+"'The church!' echoed the tailor, all the blood of the MacGregor rising
+in his boots, with an oath that shocked the brother out of all
+hope--'What's the church to military matters?'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_Snicker's Gap--Private Harry on the "Anaconda"--Not inclined to turn
+Boot-Black--"Oh! why did you go for a Soldier?"--The
+ex-News-Boy--Pigeon-hole Generalship on the March--The Valley of the
+Shenandoah--A Flesh Carnival--The Dutch Doctor on a Horse-dicker--An Old
+Rebel, and how he parted with his Apple-Brandy--Toasting the
+"Union"--Spruce Retreats._
+
+
+The movement down the Valley was one of those at that time popular
+"bagging" movements, peculiar to the Grand Army of the Potomac, and in
+their style of execution, or to speak correctly, intended execution--for
+the absence of that quality has rendered them ridiculous--original with
+its Commander. Semi-official reports, industriously circulated from the
+gold-striped Staff to the blue-striped Field Officer, and by the latter
+whispered in confidence in the anxious ears of officers of the line, and
+again transferred in increasing volume to the subs, and by them in
+knowing confidence to curious privates, had it that the principal rebel
+force would be hemmed in, in the Valley of the Shenandoah, by our
+obtaining command of the Gaps, and then we would be nearest their
+Capital in a direct line--we would compel them to fight us, where, when,
+and how we pleased, or else beat them in a race to Richmond, and
+then----. The reader must imagine happy results that could not
+consistently be expected, while to gain the same destination over
+equidistant and equally good roads, Strategy moved by comparatively slow
+marches and easy halts, while Desperation strained every nerve, with
+rattling batteries and almost running ranks.
+
+"But, Lieutenant, if that's so," alluding to the purpose of their march,
+"why are we halting here?"
+
+"Our troops block up the roads, I suppose."
+
+"We could march in the fields," rejoined the anxious private, "by the
+road-side; they are open and firm."
+
+"We'll see, Harry, in a day or two, what it all amounts to. May be the
+'Anaconda' that is to smash out the rebellion, is making another turn,
+or 'taking in a reef,' as the Colonel says."
+
+"Well," rejoined the Private, "I have endeavored to book myself up, as
+far as my advantages would allow, in our army movements; and the nearest
+approach to anything like an anaconda, that I can see or hear of, is
+that infernal Red-tape worm that is strangling the soul out of the army.
+What inexcusable nonsense to attempt to apply to an immense army in time
+of war, such as we have now in the field, the needless, petty
+pigeon-hole details that regulated ten thousand men on a peace
+establishment. And to carry them out, look how many valuable officers,
+or officers who ought to be valuable, from the expense Uncle
+Sam has been at to give them educational advantages, are doing
+clerkly duty--that civilians, our business men, our accountants,
+could as well, if not better, attend to--in the offices of the
+Departments at Washington, in the Commissary and Quarter-Master's
+Departments,--handling quills and cheese-knives instead of swords, and
+never giving 'the villainous smell of saltpetre' the slightest chance
+'to come betwixt the wind and their nobility.'"
+
+Harry, at the time of his volunteering was an associate editor of a well
+established and ably conducted country newspaper. He had thrown himself
+with successful energy into the formation of the regiment to which he
+belonged. A prominent position was proffered him, but he sturdily
+refused any place but the ranks, alleging that he had never drilled a
+day in his life, and particularly insisting that those who had seen
+service and were somewhat skilled in the tactics, although many of them
+were far his inferiors in intelligence, should occupy the offices. From
+his gentlemanly deportment and ability he was on familiar terms with the
+officers, and popular among the men. Withal, he was a finely formed,
+soldierly-looking man. In the early part of his service he was reserved
+in his comments upon the conduct of the war, and considered, as he was
+in fact, conservative,--setting the best possible example of
+taciturnity, subordinate to the wisdom of his superiors.
+
+"Harry, you have been detailed as a clerk about Brigade Head Quarters,"
+said the Orderly Sergeant of his company, one morning, after he had been
+in service about two months.
+
+Harry did not like the separation from his Company in the least, but
+notwithstanding, quietly reported for duty. Several days of desk
+drudgery, most laborious to one fresh from out-door exercise, had
+passed, when one morning about eight o'clock, a conceited coxcomb of an
+aid, in slippers, entered the office-tent, and holding a pair of muddy
+boots up, with an air of matter-of-course authority--ordered Harry to
+blacken them, telling him at the same time, in a milder and lower tone,
+that black Jim the cook had the brush and blackening.
+
+"What, sir?" said Harry, rising like a rocket, his Saxon blood mounting
+to the very roots of his red hair.
+
+"I order you to black those boots, sir," was the repeated and more
+insolent command.
+
+"And I'll see you d----d first," retorted Harry, doubling his fist.
+
+The aid not liking the furious flush upon Harry's face, with wise
+discretion backed out, muttering after he was fairly outside of the
+tent, something about a report to the Brigadier. Report he did, and very
+shortly after there was a vacancy in his position upon the Staff of that
+Officer. Harry, at his own request, was in the course of a week relieved
+from duty, and restored to his Company. Ever after he had a tongue.
+
+The reply of the Lieutenant to Harry's remarks has all this time been in
+abeyance, however.
+
+"Harry," said that officer, "we must follow the stars without murmuring
+or muttering against the judgment of superiors,--but one can't help
+surmising, and," the Lieutenant had half mechanically added when the
+Sergeant-Major saluted him.
+
+"Where is the Captain, Lieutenant?"
+
+"Not about, at present."
+
+"Well," continued the Sergeant, "reveille at four, and in line at five
+in the morning."
+
+Those beds of thickly littered straw were hard to leave in the chill
+mist of the morning. The warning notes of the reveille trilling in
+sweetest melody from the fife of the accomplished fife-major,
+accompanied by the slumber-ending rattle of the drum, admitted of no
+alternative. Many a brave boy as he stood in line that morning, ready
+for the march, the first sparkle of sunrise glistening upon his bayonet,
+wondered whether father or mother, sister or brother, yet in their
+slumbers, doubtless, in the dear old homestead, knew that the army was
+on the move, and that the setting sun might gild his breast-plate as in
+his last sleep he faced the sky.
+
+"Oh! why did you go for a soldier?" sang our little news-boy,
+tauntingly, as he capered behind a big burly Dutchman in the rear rank,
+who had encountered all manner of misfortune that morning,--missing his
+coffee--and what is a man worth on a day's march without coffee--because
+it was too hot to drink, when the bugle sounded the call to fall in, his
+meat raw, not even the smell of fire about it, and his crackers half
+roasted; his clothes, too, half on, belts twisted, knapsack badly made
+up. As he grumbled over his mishaps, in his peculiar vernacular,
+laughter commenced with the men, and ended in a roar at the song of the
+news-boy.
+
+A crowd gathers food for mirth from the most trivial matters. Incidents
+that would not provoke a smile individually, convulse them collectively.
+Men under restraint in ranks are particularly infectious from the
+influence of the passions. With lightning-like rapidity, to misapply a
+familiar line--
+
+          "They pass from grave to gay, from lively to severe."
+
+Snicker's Gap, which drew its euphoneous name from a First Virginia
+family that flourished in the neighborhood, was one of the coveted
+points. In the afternoon our advance occupied it, and the neighboring
+village of Snickersville; fortunately first perhaps, in force, or what
+is most probable, considering results, amused by a show of resistance to
+cover the main Rebel movement then rapidly progressing further down the
+valley. From whatever cause, firing--musketry and artillery--was heard
+at intervals all the latter part of the afternoon; and as the troops
+neared the Gap, they were told that the Rebels had been driven from it
+across the river, and that it was now in our possession. Night was
+rapidly setting in as the division formed line of battle on the borders
+of the village. A halt but for a few moments. Their position was shortly
+changed to the mountain slope below the village. Down the valley sudden
+flashes of light and puffs of smoke that gracefully volumed upwards,
+followed by the sullen roar of artillery, revealed a contest between the
+advancing and retreating forces. That fire-lit scene must be a life
+picture to the fortunate beholders. Directly in front and on the left,
+thousands of camp fires burning in the rear of stacks made from
+line-of-battle, blazed in parallel rows, regular as the gas-lights of
+the avenues of a great city, and illumining by strange contrasts of
+light and shade the animated forms that encircled them. Far down to the
+right, the vertical flashes from the cannon vents vivid as lightning
+itself, instantly followed by horizontal lurid flames, belched forth
+from their dread mouths, lighting for the instant wood and field, formed
+the grandest of pyrotechnic displays. Rare spectacle--in one magnificent
+panorama, gleaming through the dark mantle of night, were the steady
+lights of peaceful camps, and the fitful flashing of the hostile cannon.
+
+"Fall in, fall in!" cried the officers, at the bugle call, and in a few
+moments the Brigade was in motion. Some in the ranks, with difficulty,
+at the same time managing their muskets and pails of coffee that had not
+had time to cool; others munching, as they marched, their half-fried
+crackers, and cooling with hasty breath smoking pieces of meat, while
+friendly comrades did double duty in carrying their pieces. The soldier
+never calculates upon time; the present is his own when off duty, and he
+is not slow to use it; the next moment may see him started upon a long
+march, or detailed for fatigue duty, and with a philosophy apt in his
+position, he lives while he can.
+
+The road through Snickersville, and up the romantic gorge or gap between
+the mountains, was a good pike, and in the best marching condition. At
+the crest the Brigade undoubled its files, and entered in double ranks a
+narrow, tortuous, rocky road, ascending the mountain to the left,
+leading through woods and over fields so covered with fragments of rock,
+that a country boy in the ranks, following up a habit, however, not by
+any means confined to the country, of giving the embodiment of evil the
+credit of all unpleasant surroundings, remarked that "the Devil's
+apron-strings must have broke loose here." That night march was a weary
+addition to the toil of the day. A short cut to the summit, which
+existed, but a mile in length, and which the Commander of the Force to
+which the Brigade formed part, could readily have ascertained upon
+inquiry, would have saved a great amount of grumbling, many hard oaths,
+for Uncle Toby's army that "swore so terribly in Flanders," could not
+outdo in that respect our Grand Army of the Potomac,--and no trifling
+amount of shoe-leather for Uncle Sam. The night was terribly cold, and
+the wind in gusts swept over the mountain-top with violence sufficient
+to put the toil-worn man, unsteady under his knapsack, through the
+facings in short order. Amid stunted pines and sturdy undergrowth, the
+Regiments in line formed stacks, and the men, debarred fire from the
+exposed situation, provided what shelter they could, and endeavored to
+compose themselves for the night. Vain endeavor. So closely was that
+summit shaved by the pitiless blasts, that a blanket could only be kept
+over the body by rolling in it, and lying face downwards, holding the
+ends by the hands, with the forehead resting on the knapsack for a
+pillow. Some in that way, by occasionally drumming their toes against
+the rocks managed to pass the night; many others sought warmth or
+amusement in groups, and others gazed silently on the camp-fires of the
+enemy, an irregular reflex of those seen on the side they had left--here
+glimmering faintly at a picket station, and there at a larger
+encampment, glowing first in a circle of blaze, then of illumined smoke,
+that in its upward course gradually darkened into the blackness of
+night. To men of contemplative habits, and many such there were, though
+clad in blouses, the scene was strongly suggestive. Our states emblemed
+in the lights of the valleys and the mountain ridge as the much talked
+of "impassable barrier." But faith in the success of a cause Heaven
+founded, saw gaps that we could control in that mountain ridge which
+would ultimately prove avenues of success.
+
+"Captain, where did you make the raise?" inquired a young Lieutenant, on
+the following day,--one of a group enjoying a blazing fire, for the ban
+had been removed at early dawn--of a ruddy-faced, sturdy-looking
+officer, who bore on his shoulder a tempting hind quarter of beef.
+
+"There is a little history connected with this beef," as he lowered his
+load. "Lieutenant," replied the Captain, interlarding his further
+statement with oaths, to which justice cannot and ought not to be done
+in print, and which were excelled in finish only by some choice ones of
+the Division General. "I went out at sunrise, thinking that by
+strolling among the rocks I might stir up a rabbit. I saw several, but
+got a fair shot at one only, and killed it. While going into a fence
+corner, in which were some thorn bushes, that I thought I could stir
+another cotton tail from, I saw a young bullock making for me, with
+lowered horns and short jumps. I couldn't get through the thorn bushes,
+and the fact is, being an old butcher I didn't care much about it, so I
+faced about, looked the bullock full in the eyes, and the bullock eyed
+me, giving at the same time an occasional toss of his short horns. Now I
+was awful hungry, never was more hollow in my life--the hardees that I
+swallowed dry in the morning fairly rattled inside of me. By-and-by I
+smelt the steaks, and a minute more I felt sure that he was a Rebel
+beast. Our young cattle up North don't corner people in that way. What's
+the use, thought I, and out came my Colt, and I planted a ball square
+between his eyes. As I returned the pistol he was on his side kicking
+and quivering. While looking at him, and rather coming to the conclusion
+that I had bought an elephant after all, as I had not even a penknife to
+skin it with, I spied that sucker-mouthed Aid of Old Pigeon-hole coming
+from another corner of the field, cantering at full jump. I left,
+walking towards Camp.
+
+"'Captain, where was that picket-firing?'
+
+"I pointed towards the wood, and told him that I thought it was along
+the picket-line."
+
+"'It must have been, I suppose,' said the Aid, in a drawling manner.
+'The General was sure it was a rifle. The rest of us thought it a pistol
+shot,' he said, as he rode off.
+
+"When he got into the wood I returned to the bullock, cursing Old
+Pigey's ears for want of experience in shots. They made me come mighty
+close to being arrested for marauding.
+
+"'Oh! whar did you git the jump-high?' said a darkie, who came up
+suddenly, pointing to the rabbit which I had put on the fence, with
+mouth open and a big show of the whites of his eyes. When he saw the
+carcass he fairly jumped.
+
+"'Massa has had me shinning it round de rocks all morning. When I'm on
+de one side de jump-high is on de oder; and if I go back widout one
+he'll cuss me for a d----d stumbling woolly-head. Dat's his name for me
+any way.'
+
+"I struck a bargain with the boy; he loaned me his jack-knife, and held
+the legs, and I had the skin off as soon as a two-inch blade (hacked at
+that) would allow, and I gave him the jump-high, and told him if he'd
+watch the beef till I carried this quarter home, I'd give him a fore
+quarter. I knew his Master was as bad off as myself, and would ask no
+questions, and then I sneaked up in rear of the General's quarters."
+
+"That's what I'd call Profane History," said the Lieutenant, as the
+Captain resumed his load.
+
+"Well, boys! Go into the Third Cavalry four months, as I did; and if any
+of you swear less than I do, I'll treat."
+
+"One fault with the story, Captain," said another Lieutenant, detaining
+him; "you make no application."
+
+"I didn't intend it as a sermon; what application would you make?"
+
+"A very practical one, Captain. I would apply half a quarter to one man,
+half a quarter to another. Make a distribution among your friends."
+
+The Captain, somewhat sold, told them to send down a detail, and he
+would distribute.
+
+The detail returned, well loaded, having performed their duty
+faithfully, with the exception of trimming Sambo's fore-quarter "mighty
+close," as he phrased it.
+
+That bullock turned out to be merely the first course of a grand flesh
+carnival, which lasted the remaining two days of the stay on Snicker's
+summit. The wood and fields almost swarmed with rabbits and quails; but
+although furnishing amusement to all, they were but titbits for the
+delicate. By some remissness of vigilance under the stringent orders,
+cattle, sheep, and hogs were slaughtered on all sides. There was an
+abundance of them; the farmers in the valley having driven them up, as
+was their custom, for the pasture and mast to be found in the fields and
+woods. Half wild, the flavor of their flesh was a close approach to that
+of game. As may be supposed, where licence was untrammelled, there was
+much needless slaughter. Fine carcasses were left as they fell, with the
+loss only of a few choice cuts. As the beasts, especially the pigs,
+which looked like our ordinary porkers well stretched, could run with
+great speed, the chase was amusing as well as exciting. Red breeches and
+blue fraternized and vied with each other in the sport, to quarrel,
+perhaps, over the spoils.
+
+Few will fail to carry to their homes recollections of that pleasing
+episode in the history of the Regiment: the feasts of fat things, the
+space-built inclosures around the camp-fires that sheltered them from
+the blast, and were amphitheatres of amusement--recollections that will
+interest many a future fireside, destined, with the lapse of time, to
+become sacred as family traditions of the Revolution. And have they not
+equal claims? The Revolution founded the country; this struggle must
+save it from the infamous and despotic demands of a most foul and
+unnatural Rebellion.
+
+"Halloo! Doctor! where did that 'animile' come from," inquired the
+Major, who formed one of a crowd, on the afternoon of the last day of
+their stay in the Head Quarters Spruce Retreat, as the little Dutch
+Doctor strutted alongside of a Corporal of an adjoining regiment, who
+led by a halter, extemporized from a musket-strap and a cross-belt, a
+small light dun horse.
+
+"Mine, Major! Pay forty-five tollar--have pay five, only forty yet to
+get. How you like him? What you tink?"
+
+The "only forty yet to get" amused the crowd, but the Major, with the
+gravity of a connoisseur, walked around the beast, nipped his legs, and
+opened his mouth.
+
+"Doctor, it's a pity to use this beast--only two years old, and never
+shod. Is he broke?"
+
+"No. No broke anywhere. Have look at whole of him."
+
+The crowd laughed, and the Major with them.
+
+"You don't understand me. Can you ride him?"
+
+"Me no ride him, no saddle. Corporal, him ride all round."
+
+The Corporal stated that he was broken in so far as to allow riding, and
+was very gentle, as indeed was apparent from the looks of the animal.
+
+"When did you get him, Corporal?" was the query of one of the crowd.
+
+"I bought four yesterday for four hundred and seventy-five dollars
+Confederate scrip."
+
+"Why, where did you get that?"
+
+"Bought it in Washington, when we first went through, of a boy on the
+Avenue for fifteen cents. I thought there might be a show for it some
+day or other."
+
+The Corporal was a slender, lantern-jawed, weasel-faced Monongahela
+raftsman, sharp as a steel-trap.
+
+"The old fellow," continued he, "hung on to five hundred dollars for
+about an hour. He took me into his house, gave me a nip of old apple
+brandy, and then he'd talk about his horses and then another nip, till
+we felt it a little, but no go. I had to jew, for it was all I had. I'd
+just as leave have given him another hundred, but I didn't tell him so.
+I told him I got it at Antietam."
+
+"You d----d rascal," said he, "I had a son killed and robbed there,
+maybe it's his money. It looks as if it had been carried a good while."
+
+"I had played smart with it, rubbed it, wet it, and in my breast pocket
+on those long marches it was well sweated."
+
+"Suppose it was your son's," said I, "all is fair in war."
+
+"That's so," said the old Rebel. "I have two other sons there; I would
+go myself, it I wasn't seventy-eight and upwards."
+
+"Well, looky here," said I, "this isn't talking horse; we'll manage your
+sons, and you, too, if you don't dry up on your treason slang. Now, old
+covey, four hundred and seventy-five or I'm back to camp without them."
+
+"I turned and got about ten steps, when he called me back and told me to
+take them. I got a bully pair of matches, fine blacks, that a Colonel in
+the Regiment paid me one hundred and twenty-five for at first sight, and
+a fine pacing bay that our Major gave me seventy-five for, and this
+one's left."
+
+"Doctor, I'm about tired of trotting around after them other forty.
+They're givin' out cracker rations, and I don't want to be cheated out
+of mine, and I must go," said the Corporal, turning quickly to the
+Doctor.
+
+The latter personage snapped his eyes, and kept his cap bobbing up and
+down, by wrinkling his forehead, as he somewhat plaintively asked the
+crowd for the funds.
+
+"Good Lord! Doctor, you might as well try to milk a he-goat with a
+bramble bush as to get money in camp now," said the Major.
+
+"Corporal," said the Adjutant, a fast friend of the Doctor's, and being
+of a musical turn, his partner in many a Dutch duet, as a bright idea
+struck him, "you don't want the money now--there are no sutlers about,
+suppose the Doctor gives you an order on the Pay-Master."
+
+"Well," said the Corporal, after some little study, and keeping a sharp
+look-out on the Adjutant, whose features were fixed, "that's a fact, I
+have no use for the money now. If one of you Head-Quarter officers
+endorses it, I will. 'Spose it's all straight."
+
+The Adjutant drew the order, and one of the Field-Officers endorsed it,
+after the manner of documents forwarded through regular military
+channels:
+
+"Approved and respectfully forwarded."
+
+It was handed to the Corporal, and he turned to go, leaving the horse
+with the Doctor, and giving the crowd an opportunity for their laugh, so
+far suppressed with difficulty. He had gone but a few paces when an
+exclamation from the quondam Third cavalryman called him back, and ended
+for the moment the laughter.
+
+"Where does the old fellow live, Corporal?"
+
+"Keep out that lane to the left, then across lots by a narrow path.
+Can't miss it. He has no more horses."
+
+"Don't want horses."
+
+"That apple brandy it's no use trying for."
+
+"Boys," said the Captain, "I'm good for half a dozen canteens of the
+stuff, I'll bet my boots on it. Who'll go along?"
+
+"I," replied a sturdy brother Captain.
+
+"Recollect now. All here at nine to-night to receive our report. No use
+to tell you that, though, when whiskey is about," said the first
+Captain, as the crowd dispersed.
+
+And that report was given by his comrade to the punctual crowd as
+follows:
+
+"When I came out to the charred pine stumps on the lane, where I was to
+meet the Captain, it was a little before dusk. I was just about clear of
+the wood, when the Colonel's big black mare, ridden by the Captain, came
+bouncing over a scrub pine and lit right in front of me. The d----l
+himself couldn't have made me feel a colder shudder.
+
+"'What's the matter? Where's your horse?'
+
+"'I thought we had better walk,' said I, recovered from the fright;
+'it's only a short distance.'
+
+"'That ain't the thing. There must be some style about this matter.'
+
+"I had noticed that the Captain had on the Colonel's fancy Regulation
+overcoat, a gilt edged fatigue cap, his over-long jingling Mexican
+spurs, and the Major's sabre dangling from his side. I came back, got
+the Adjutant's horse, and rejoined him.
+
+"'Now, I want you to understand,' said the Captain, putting on his
+prettiest, as we jogged along the lane, 'that I'm General Burnside. How
+does that strike you?'
+
+"'That you don't look a d--n bit like Burney. He is no fancy man. Your
+style is nearer the Prince's,--Fitz John. All you want are the yellow
+kids,' rejoined I.
+
+"'Too near home, that. How will Gen. Franklin do?'
+
+"As I knew nothing about Franklin's appearance, I said I supposed that
+would do. Before respectable people I'd have hated to see any of our
+Generals wronged by the Captain's looks, but as it was only a Rebel, it
+didn't make any difference. And then the object overcame all scruples.
+
+"'Well,' continued the Captain, 'you are to be one of my aids. When we
+get near the house, just fall back a pace or two.'
+
+"And off he rode, the big mare trotting like an elephant, and keeping my
+nag up to a gallop. Keeping back a pace or two was a matter of
+necessity. The Captain was full a hundred yards ahead when he halted
+near the house to give me time to get in position, his black mare
+prancing and snorting under the Mexican ticklers in a manner that would
+have done credit to Bucephalus. He pranced on up towards the house,
+which was a long weather-boarded structure, a story and a half high,
+with a porch running its entire length. The building was put up, I
+should judge, before the war of 1812, and not repaired since. A crabbed
+old man in a grey coat, with horn buttons, and tan-colored pantaloons,
+looking as if he didn't know what to make exactly of the character of
+his visitors, was on the porch. Near him, and somewhat in his rear, was
+a darkie about as old as himself.
+
+"'Won't you get off your critters?' at length said the old man, his
+servant advancing to hold the horses.
+
+"The Captain dismounted, and as his long spurs jingled, and the Major's
+sabre clattered on the rotten porch floor, the old fellow changed
+countenance considerably, impressed with the presence of greatness.
+
+"'I am Major-General Franklin, sir, commander of a Grand Division of the
+Grand Army of the Potomac,' pompously said the Captain, at the same time
+introducing me as his Aid, Major Kennedy.
+
+"'Well, gentlemen officers,' stammers the old man, confusedly, and
+bowing repeatedly, 'I always liked the old Union. I fit for it in the
+milish in the last war with the Britishers. Walk in, walk in,' continued
+he, pointing to the door which the darkie had opened.
+
+"We went into a long room with a low ceiling, dirty floor with no carpet
+on, a few old chairs, with and without backs, and a walnut table that
+looked as if it once had leaves. In one corner was a clock, that stopped
+some time before the war commenced, as the old man afterwards told us,
+and in the opposite corner stood a dirty pine cupboard. While taking
+seats, I couldn't help thinking how badly the room would compare with a
+dining room of one of the neat little farm houses that you can see in
+any of our mountain gaps, where the land produces nothing but
+grasshoppers and rocks, and the farmers have to get along by raising
+chickens to keep down the swarms of grasshoppers, and by peddling
+huckleberries, and they say, but I never saw them at it, by holding the
+hind legs of the sheep up to let them get their noses between the rocks
+for pasture."
+
+This latter assertion was indignantly denied by an officer who had his
+home in one of the gaps.
+
+"'Well,' continued the Captain, 'I only give it as I heard it. The old
+man talked Union awhile, said he tried to be all right, but that his
+sons had run off with the Rebels; and he hemmed and hawed about his
+being all right until the Captain, who had been spitting fips a long
+time, got tired, especially after what the Corporal had said.
+
+"'Well, my old brother patriot,' said the Captain, bending forward in
+his chair, and putting on a stern look, 'it don't look exactly right.'
+
+"'How! What! gentlemen officers,' said the old Rebel, pretending, as he
+raised his hand to his ear, not to hear the Captain.
+
+"The Captain repeated it louder in his gruff voice, and with a few more
+airs.
+
+"'Why, gentlemen officers?' said the old man, rising, half bowing, and
+looking about, ready to do anything.
+
+"'You know as well as we do,' said the Captain; 'that you wouldn't let
+two of your neighbors be this long in the house without offering them
+something to drink. Now, my old friend, as you say you're all right,
+we're neighbors in a good cause, and one neighborly act deserves
+another; you might be wanting to have your property protected, or to go
+to the Ferry, or to send something, and you could hardly get a pass
+without a Major-General having something to do with it.'
+
+"At this last the old fellow's face brightened up somewhat.
+
+"'I'll lose a right smart lot of crops,' said the old man, drawing his
+chair close to the Captain in a half begging, confidential sort of a
+way, 'if I don't get to the Ferry this fall. They're stored up there,
+and I want to go up and show them I am a Union man all right. George,'
+turning to the darkie, who, cap in hand, stood at the door, 'strike a
+light and get the waiter, and three glasses, and bring up some of the
+old apple in a pitcher. Be careful not to spill any. Liquor is mighty
+scarce,' continued he, turning to us, 'in these parts since the war.
+This 'ere I've saved over by hard squeezin'. It was stilled seven years
+ago this fall--the fall apples were so plenty.'
+
+"George had the tallow-dip, a rusty waiter, three small old-fashioned
+blue glass tumblers, and a pitcher with the handle knocked off, on the
+table in good time. We closed around it with our chairs, and the Captain
+filled the glasses, and rising, gave for the first round 'The old
+Union.' Our glasses were emptied; the old man had but sipped of his.
+
+"'My old friend, you fought in 1812, you say, and hardly touch your
+tumbler to the old Union. Come, it must have a full glass.' The
+authority in the tone of the Captain made the old man swallow it, but as
+he did so he muttered something about its being very scarce.
+
+"'Now,' said the Captain, refilling the glasses, 'Here is The Union as
+it is.'
+
+"The old Rebel feeling his first glass a little, and they say anyway
+when wine goes in the truth comes out, said in rather a low, trembling
+tone,
+
+"'Now, the fact is, gentlemen officers, some Yankees--not you! not you!
+but some Yankees way up North, acted kind of bad.'
+
+"'That's not the question,' said the Captain, 'there are bad men all
+over, and lots of them in Virginia. The toast is before the house,'--the
+Captain had already swallowed his--'and it must be drunk;' and the
+Major's sabre struck the floor till the table shook.
+
+"With a shudder at the sound the old man gulped it down. The glasses
+were refilled and the pitcher emptied.
+
+"'Here's to The blessed Union as it will be, after all the d----d Rebels
+are either under the sod or swinging in hemp neck-ties about ten feet
+above it,' the Captain shouted, waving at the same time his uplifted
+glass in a way that brought a grin on George's face, and made the old
+man look pale.
+
+"'Now! now! now! gentlemen officers,' gasped the old traitor, as
+if his breath was coming back by jerks, 'that is pretty hard,
+considerin'--considerin' my two sons ran off 'gainst my will--'gainst
+my will, gentlemen officers, understand, and jined the Rebels;' and
+then, as the liquor worked up his pluck and pride, he went on, 'and old
+Stonewall when he was here last, told me himself at this very table that
+such soldiers the South could be proud of; and Turner Ashby told me the
+same thing, and it would be agin all natur for an old man not to feel
+proud of such boys, after hearing all that from such men, and now you
+want me to drink such a toast. That----'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' broke in the Captain, who had emptied his glass, 'and it
+must be done.'
+
+"'The fact is, gentlemen officers,' the liquor still working up his
+pluck, 'we Southerners _had_ to fit you. You sent old Brown down to run
+off our niggers, and then when we hung him, you come yourselves. Every
+cussed nigger--and I had forty-three in all--has left me and ran away
+but old George and two old wenches that can't run, and are good for
+nothin' but to chaw corndodgers.' The whiskey now worked fast on the old
+man, and making half a fist, he said, 'I reckon when hangin' day comes
+some Blue Bellies will have an airin'.'
+
+"'You d----d grey-headed old traitor!' roared out the Captain, 'the
+liquor has let the treason out. Now, by all that's holy, drink that
+toast standing, head up, as if there was patriotic blood in your
+veins--as if you lived in the State Washington was born in--or you'll
+find out what it is to talk treason before a Major-General of the army
+of the United States.' Another stroke of the sabre on the floor that
+rattled the broken glass in the windows followed. The old man gave
+another shudder, straightened up, steadied himself at the table with his
+left hand, and with a swallow that nearly strangled him, drank off his
+glass.
+
+"'Ha! old fellow,' said the Captain, grinning, 'you came near cheating
+hemp that clip.'
+
+"'George, show us where the apple brandy is,' he continued, addressing
+the darkie.
+
+"The darkie bowed, grinned, and pointed to the door leading to the
+cellar way.
+
+"'Oh, Lord! my spirits! Don't take it, gentlemen officers, I must have a
+morning dram, and it's all I've got. Let me keep the spirits.'
+
+"'You old d----l!' exclaimed the Captain, as he eyed him savagely,
+'spirits have made all the trouble in the country. Yes, sir. Bad whiskey
+and worse preaching of false spiritual doctrines, such as slavery being
+a Divine institution, and what not, started the Rebellion, and keep it
+up. Spirits are contraband of war, just as Ben Butler says niggers are,
+and we'll confiscate it'--here the Captain gave me a sly look--'in the
+name and by the authority of the President of the United States. Major,
+where's your canteens?'
+
+"I produced three that had been slung under my cape, and the Captain as
+many more.
+
+"As the old Rebel saw the preparations he groaned out, 'My God! and only
+four inches in the barrel George! mind, the barrel in the corner.'
+
+"Knowing the darkie would be all right, we followed under pretty stiff
+loads, the old man bringing up the rear, staggering to the door and
+getting down the steps on his hands and knees.
+
+"The Captain tasted both barrels. One in a corner was commissary that
+the darkie said 'Massa had dickered for just the day afore.' The other
+was well nigh empty. George, old as he was, had the steadiest hands, and
+he filled the canteens one by one, closing their mouths on the cedar
+spigot. As he did it, he whispered, 'Dis'll make de ole nigger feel
+good. Massa gets flustered on dis and 'buses de ole wimin. De commissary
+fotches him--can't hurt nuffin wid dat.'
+
+"'There's devilish little to fluster him now,' said the Captain, as he
+tipped the barrel to fill the last canteen.
+
+"The old man had stuck at the bottom of the steps. George fairly carried
+him up, and he lay almost helpless on the floor.
+
+"'That last toast,' said the Captain, as we left the room, 'will knock
+any Rebel.'
+
+"George held the horses, and I rather guess steadied our legs as we got
+on, well loaded with apple juice inside and out. The Captain's spurs
+sent the black mare off at a gallop, over rocks and bushes, and he left
+me far behind in a jiffy. But I did in earnest act as an aid before we
+got to camp. I found him near the place where we turn in, fast between
+two scrub oaks, swearing like a trooper at the pickets, as he called the
+bushes, for arresting him, and unable to get backward or forward. His
+swearing saved him that clip, as it was dark, and I would have gone past
+if I hadn't heard it."
+
+"I move the adoption of the report, with the thanks of the meeting to
+Major-General Franklin and his genuine Aid," said the Adjutant, after a
+stiff drink all around.
+
+"I move that it be referred back for report on the Commissary," said a
+Lieutenant, after another equally stiff round.
+
+The Adjutant would not withdraw his motion,--no chairman to preserve
+order,--brandy good,--drinks frequent, and in the confusion that ensued
+we close the chapter, remarking only that the Commissary was spared to
+the old Rebel, through an order to march at four next morning, that came
+to hand near midnight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_The March to Warrenton--Secesh Sympathy and Quarter-Master's
+Receipts--Middle-Borough--The Venerable Uncle Ned and his Story of the
+Captain of the Tigers--The Adjutant on Strategy--Red-Tapism and
+Mac-Napoleonism--Movement Stopped--Division Head-Quarters out of
+Whiskey--Stragglers and Marauders--A Summary Proceeding--Persimmons and
+Picket-Duty--A Rebellious Pig--McClellanism._
+
+
+The order to march at four meant moving at six, as was not unfrequently
+the case, the men being too often under arms by the hour shivering for
+the step, while the Staff Officers who issued the orders were snoozing
+in comfortable blankets. Be the cause what it might that morning, the
+soldiers probably did not regret it, as it gave them opportunity to see
+the lovely valley of the Shenandoah exposed to their view for the last
+time, as the fog gradually lifted before the rays of the rising sun. The
+Shenandoah, like a silver thread broken by intervening foliage, lay at
+their feet. Far to the right, miles distant, was Charlestown, where old
+John's soul, appreciative of the beauties of nature at the dread hour of
+execution, seeing in them doubtless the handiwork of nature's God,
+exclaimed "This is indeed a beautiful country." In the front, dim in the
+distance, was Winchester, readily discovered by the bold mountain spur
+in its rear. Smaller villages dotted the valley, variegated by fields
+and woods--all rebellious cities of the plain, nests of treason and
+granaries of food for traitors. A blind mercy that, on the part of the
+Administration, that procured its almost total exemption from the
+despoiling hand of war.
+
+Some in the ranks on Snicker's Summit that fine morning could remember
+the impudent Billingsgate of look and tongue with which Mrs. Faulkner
+would fling in their faces a general pass, from a wagon loaded with
+garden truck for traitors in arms at Bunker Hill--but an instance of
+long continued good-nature, to use a mild phrase, of the many that have
+characterized our movements in the field. Well does the great discerner
+of the desires of men as well as delineator of the movements of their
+passions, make Crook Richard on his foully usurped and tottering throne
+exclaim,
+
+          "War must be brief when traitors brave the field."
+
+At a later day, in a holier cause, the line remains an axiom. Nor at the
+time of which we write was the policy much changed. While all admit the
+necessity, for the preservation of proper discipline, of having Rebel
+property for the use of the army taken formally under authorities duly
+constituted for the purpose, and not by indiscriminate license to the
+troops, none can be so blind as to fail to see the bent of the
+sympathies controlling the General in command. During the march to
+Middle-Borough, horses were taken along the route to supply deficiencies
+in the teams, and forage for their use, but in all cases the women who
+claimed to represent absent male owners--absent doubtless in arms--and
+who made no secret of their own Rebel inclinations, received
+Quarter-Master's receipts for their full value--generally, in fact,
+their own valuation. These receipts were understood to be presently
+payable. The interests of justice and our finances would have been much
+better subserved had their payment been conditioned upon the loyalty of
+the owner. A different policy would not have comported, however, with
+that which at an earlier day placed Lee's mansion on the Peninsula under
+double guard, and when you give it the in that case sorry merit of
+consistency, its best excuse is given.
+
+Beyond some lives lost by a force of Regulars who ventured too near the
+river without proper precautions the day after we occupied the Gap, and
+the loss of a Regimental head-quarters wagon, loaded with the officers'
+baggage, broken down upon a road on which the exhorting Colonel, after
+deliberate survey, had set his heart as the safest of roads from the
+Summit, nothing of note occurred during the stay. Our evacuation of the
+Gap was almost immediately followed by Rebel occupation.
+
+The statement that nothing of note occurred may, perhaps, be doing
+injustice to our little Dutch Doctor, who had the best of reasons for
+remembering the morning of our departure from Snicker's Summit. To the
+Doctor the mountain, with its rocks, seemed familiar ground. A Tyrolese
+by birth, he loved to talk of his mountain home and sing its lively
+airs. But that sweet home had one disadvantage. Their beasts of draught
+and burden were oxen, and the only horse in the village was a cart-horse
+owned by the Doctor's father. Of necessity, therefore, his horsemanship
+was defective, an annoying affair in the army. Many officers and men
+were desirous of seeing the Doctor mount and ride his newly purchased
+horse, and the Doctor was quite as anxious to evade observation. His
+saddle was on and blankets strapped as he surveyed the beast, now
+passing to this side and now to that, giving wide berth to heels that
+never kicked, and with his servant at hand, waiting until the last files
+of the Regiment had disappeared in the woods below. Not unobserved,
+however, for two of the Field and Staff had selected a clump of scrub
+pines close at hand for the purpose of witnessing the movement. A rock
+near by served him as a stand from which to mount. The horse was brought
+up, and the Doctor, after patting his head and rubbing his neck to
+assure himself of the good intentions of the animal, cautiously took his
+place in the saddle and adjusted his feet in the stirrups.
+
+The animal moved off quietly enough, until the Doctor, to increase his
+speed, touched him in the flank with his spur, when the novel sensation
+to the beast had the effect of producing a sudden flank movement, which
+resulted in the instant precipitation of the Doctor upon his back among
+the rocks and rough undergrowth. The horse stood quietly; there was no
+movement of the bushes among which the Doctor fell, and the mirth of the
+observers changed to fear lest an accident of a serious nature had
+occurred. The officers and servant rushed to the spot. Fortunately the
+fall had been broken somewhat by the bushes, but nevertheless plainly
+audible groans in Dutch escaped him, and when aware of the presence of
+the observers, exclamations in half broken English as to what the result
+might have been. The actual result was that the horse was forthwith
+condemned as "no goot" by the Doctor; an ambulance sent for, and
+necessity for the first time made him take a seat during the march in
+that vehicle, a practice disgracefully common among army surgeons. The
+horse in charge of the servant followed, but was ever after used as a
+pack. No amount of persuasion, even when way-worn and foot-sore from the
+march, could induce the Doctor to remount his charger.
+
+Middle-Borough, a pretty place near the Bull Run Range of mountains, was
+reached about ten o'clock in the forenoon of the day after leaving the
+Gap. After the first Bull Run battle the place was made use of, as
+indeed were all the towns as far up the country as Martinsburg, as a
+Rebel hospital. Some of the inmates in butternut and grey, with surgeons
+and officers on parole in like color, but gorgeous in gilding, were
+still to be seen about the streets. Greyheaded darkies and picaninnies
+peered with grinning faces over every fence. The wenches were busily
+employing the time allowed for the halt in baking hoe-cakes for the men.
+
+In front of the principal mansion of the place, owned by a Major in the
+Rebel service under Jackson, a small group of officers and men were
+interesting themselves in the examination of an antique naval sword that
+had just been purchased by a Sergeant from a venerable Uncle Ned, who
+stood hat in hand, his bald head exposed to the sun, bowing as each new
+comer joined the crowd.
+
+"Dat sword, gemmen," said the negro, politely and repeatedly bowing,
+"belonged to a Captain ob de Louisiana Tigers dat Hannar Amander and me
+nussed, case he came late and couldn't get into de hospitals or houses,
+dey was so full right after de fust big Bull Run fight. His thigh was
+all shot to pieces. He hadn't any money, and didn't seem to hab any
+friends but Hannar Amander."
+
+"Who is Hannah Amanda?" said one of the crowd.
+
+"My wife, sah," said the old man, crossing his breast slowly with his
+right hand and profoundly bowing.
+
+"Hannar Amander said de young man must be cared for, dat de good Lor
+would hold us 'countable if we let him suffer, so we gab him our bed,
+shared our little hoe-cake and rye coffee wid him, and Susan Matildar,
+my darter, and my wife dressed de wound as how de surgeon would tell us.
+But after about five days de surgeon shook his head and told de Captain
+he couldn't lib. De poor young man failed fast arter dat; he would moan
+and mutter all time ober ladies' names.
+
+"'Reckon you hab a moder and sisters?' said my wife to him one morning.
+
+"'Oh, God! yes,' said de fine-looking young man, for, as Hannar Amander
+said, he was purty as a pictur, and she'd often say how much would his
+moder and sisters gib if dey could only nuss him instead of us poor
+culled pussons. He said, too, he was no Rebel at heart--dat he was from
+de Norf, and a clerk in a store at New Orleans, and dey pressed him to
+go, and den he thought he'd better go as Captain if he had to go, and
+dey made him Captain. 'And now I must die a traitor! My God! when will
+my moder and sisters hear of dis, and what will dey say?' and he went on
+so and moaned; and when we found out he was from up Norf, and sorry at
+dat for being a Rebel, we felt all de warmer toward him. He called us
+bery kind, but moaned and went on so dreadfully dat my wife and darter
+didn't know what to do to comfort him. Dey bathed his head and made him
+cool drinks, but no use. 'It's not de pain ob de body,' said Hannar
+Amander to me, 'it's ob de heart--dat's what's de matter.'
+
+"'Hab you made your peace wid God, and are you ready for eberlasting
+rest?' said my wife to him.
+
+"'My God!' groaned he, 'dere's no peace or rest for me. I'm a sinner and
+a Rebel too. Oh, I can't die in such a cause!' and he half raised up,
+but soon sunk down again.
+
+"'We'm all rebels to de bressed God. His Grace alone can sab us,' said
+my wife, and she sung from dat good hymn
+
+          "'Tis God alone can gib
+              De bliss for which we sigh.'
+
+"'Susan Matildar, bring your Bible and read some.' While she said dis,
+de poor young man's eyes got full ob tears.
+
+"'Oh, my poor moder! how she used to read to me from dat book, and how
+I've neglected it,' said he.
+
+"Den Susan Matildar--she'd learned to read from her missus' little
+girls--read about all de weary laden coming unto de blessed Sabiour.
+Wheneber she could she'd read to him, and I went and got good old
+Brudder Jones to pray for him. By un by de young man begin to pray
+hisself, and den he smiled, and den, oh, I neber can forget how Hannar
+Amander clapped her hands and shouted 'Now I know he's numbered wid de
+army ob de Lor'! kase he smiles.' Dat was his first smile; but I can
+tell you, gemmen, it grew brighter and brighter, and by un by his face
+was all smiles, and he died saying he'd meet his moder and all ob us in
+Hebben, and praising de bressed Lor'!"
+
+The old man wiped his eyes, and there was a brief pause, none caring
+even in that rough, hastily collected crowd to break the silence that
+followed his plain and pathetic statement.
+
+"But how did you get the sword?" at last inquired one.
+
+"Before he died he said he was sorry he could not pay us for our
+kindness," resumed the old man. "Hannar Amander said dat shouldn't
+trouble him, our pay would be entered up in our 'ternal count.
+
+"And den he gab me dis sword and said I should keep it and sell it, and
+dat would bring me suffin'. And he gab Susan Matildar his penknife. De
+Secesh am 'quiring about de sword. I'd like to keep it, to mind de young
+man by, but we've all got him here," said the old man, pointing to his
+heart. "I'd sooner gib it to you boys dan sell it to de Rebels, but de
+Sargeant yer was good enough to pay me suffin for it, and den I cant
+forget dat good young man, I see his grave every day. We buried him at
+de foot ob our little lot, and Susan Matildar keeps flowers on his grave
+all day long. Her missus found out he was from de Norf and was sorry
+'fore he died he had been a Rebel, and she told Susan Matildar she
+wouldn't hab buried him dere. But Hannar Amander said dat if all de
+Rebels got into glory so nice dey'd do well; and de sooner dey are dere
+de better for us all, dis ole man say."
+
+This last brought a smile to the crowd, and a collection was taken up
+for the old man.
+
+"Bress you, gemmen! bress you! Served my Master forty-five years and hab
+nuffin to show for it. Our little patch Hannar Amander got, but I tries
+to sarve de Lor at de same time, and dere is a better 'count kept ob dat
+in a place where old Master dead and gone now pas' twenty years, will
+nebber hab a chance ob getting at de books."
+
+The old man had greatly won upon his hearers, when the bugle called them
+to their posts.
+
+Our corps from this place took the road to White Plains, near which
+little village they encamped in a wood for two nights and a day, while a
+snow-storm whitened the fields.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          "Let the hawk stoop, the bird has flown,"
+
+said a boyish-faced officer who was known in the Regiment as the
+Poetical Lieutenant, to the Adjutant, as he pushed aside the canvas door
+of the Office Tent on one of those wintry evenings. The caller had left
+the studies of the Sophomoric year,--or rather his Scott, Byron, Burns,
+and the popular novelists of the day,--for the recruiting service in his
+native county. The day-dreams of the boy as to the gilded glory of the
+soldier had been roughly broken in upon by severe practical lessons, in
+tedious out-post duty and wearisome marches. He could remember, as could
+many others, how he had admired the noble and commanding air with which
+Washington stands in the bow of the well loaded boat as represented on
+the historic canvas, and the stern determination depicted upon the
+countenances of the rest of his Roman-nosed comrades--(why is it that
+our historic artists make all our Revolutionary Fathers Roman-nosed? If
+their pictures are faithful, where in the world do our swarms of pugs
+and aquilines come from worn by those claiming Revolutionary descent? Is
+it beyond their skill to make a pug or an aquiline an index to nobility
+of soul or heroic resolve?)--as they keep the frozen masses borne by
+that angry tide at safe distance from the frail bark--but he then felt
+nothing of the ice grating the sides of the vessel in which he hoped to
+make the voyage of life, nor shuddered at the wintry midnight blast that
+swept down the valley of the Delaware. His dreams had departed; but
+poetical quotations remained for use at every opportunity.
+
+"What's the matter now?" says the Adjutant.
+
+"One of the Aids just told me," rejoined the Lieutenant, "that the
+Rebels were in force in our front, and would contest the Rappahannock,
+while the possession of the Gap we have just left lets them in upon our
+rear."
+
+"The old game played out again," says the Adjutant. "Another string
+loose in the bag. Strategy in one respect resembles mesmerism--the
+object operated upon must remain perfectly quiet. Are we never to
+suppose that the Rebels have plans, and that their vigilance increases,
+and will increase, in proportion to the extremity of their case? Our
+theorists and routine men move armies as a student practises at chess,
+as if the whole field was under their control, and both armies at their
+disposal. With our immense resources, vigorous fighting and practical
+common sense would speedily suppress the Rebellion. Where are our old
+fighting stock of Generals? our Hookers, Heintzelmans, Hancocks, and men
+of like kidney? Why must their fiery energies succumb to a cold-blooded
+strategy, that wastes the materiel of war, and what is worse, fills our
+hospitals to no purpose? Those men have learned how to command from
+actual contact with men. The art of being practical, adapting one's self
+to emergencies, is not taught in schools. With some it is doubtless
+innate; with the great mass, it is a matter of education, such as is
+acquired from moving among men."
+
+          "We have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
+             Where is our Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
+          Of two such lessons why forget
+             The nobler and the manlier one?"
+
+broke in our Poetical Lieutenant.
+
+"D--n your Pyrrhics," retorted the Adjutant, snappishly. "For the
+Pyrrhics of past days we have Empirics now. Our phalanxes of old have
+been led to victory by militia Colonels, who sprang from the thinking
+head of the people, glowing with the sacred fire of their cause. Do you
+not believe," continued he enthusiastically, "that the loyal masses who
+sprang into ranks at the insult upon Sumter would have found a leader
+long ere this worthy of their cause, whose rapid and decisive blows
+would have saved us disgraceful campaigns, had the nation been
+unencumbered by this ruin of a Regular Army, that has given us little
+else than a tremendous array of officers, many of them of the
+Pigeon-hole and Paper order,--beggarly lists of Privates,--Routine that
+must be carried out at any cost of success,--and Red Tape that
+everywhere represses patriotism? And then to think, too, of the
+half-heartedness and disaffection. How long must these sneaking
+Catilines in high places abuse our patience? But what can be expected
+from officers who are not in the service from patriotic motives, but
+rather from prospects of pay and position? End the war, and you will
+have men who are now unworthy Major and Brigadier Generals, subsiding
+into Captains and Lieutenants. Their movements indicate that _they_
+realize their position fully; but when will the country realize that
+'strategy' is played out?"
+
+"The whiskey at Division Head-quarters is played out, any way," said a
+Sergeant on duty in the Commissary Department, who had entered the tent
+while the Adjutant was speaking.
+
+          "'And not a drop to drink,'"
+
+rejoined the Lieutenant.
+
+"Then, by Heaven, we are lost," continued the Adjutant. "Strategy played
+out and our General of Division out of whiskey. Yes, sir! those mishaps
+end all further movement of this Grand Army of the Potomac. But when did
+you hear that?"
+
+"I was in the marquee of the Brigade Commissary when a Sergeant and a
+couple of privates on duty about Pigey's Head-quarters came in with a
+demijohn and a note to the Commissary, presenting the compliments of the
+General commanding Division, and at the same time the cash for four
+gallons of whiskey. The Captain read it carefully and told the Sergeant
+to tell the General that he didn't keep a dram-shop. I expected that
+this reply would make sport, and I concluded to wait awhile and see the
+thing out. In a few minutes the Sergeant returned, stating that he had
+not given that reply to the General, through fear, I suppose, but had
+stated that the Captain had made some excuse. He said further that Pigey
+said he was entirely out, and must have some.
+
+"'Tell him what I told you,' said the Captain, determinedly. Off the
+Sergeant started. I waited for his return outside, and asked him how
+Pigey took the answer. 'Took it?' said he, 'I didn't tell him about the
+dram-shop, but when he found I had none, he raved like mad--swore he was
+entirely out--had been since morning, and must and would have some. He
+d----d the Captain for being a temperance fanatic, and for bringing his
+fanatical notions into the army; and all the while he paced up and down
+his marquee like a tiger at a menagerie. At last he told me that I must
+return again and tell the Captain that it was a case of absolute
+necessity, and that he knew that there was a barrel of it among the
+Commissary stores, and that he must have his four gallons.'
+
+"I followed the Sergeant in, but he could not make it. The Captain had
+just turned it over to the Hospital.
+
+"So the Sergeant went back again with the empty demijohn. He told me
+afterwards that the General was so taken aback by his not getting any,
+that he sat quietly down on his camp stool, ran his fingers through his
+hair, pulled at his moustache, and then 'I knew,' said the Sergeant,
+'that a storm was brewing, and that the General was studying how to do
+justice to the subject. At length he rose slowly, kicked his hat that
+had fallen at his feet to one corner of the marquee, d----g it at the
+same time; d----d me for not getting it any how, and clenching his fists
+and walking rapidly up and down, d----d the Captain, his Brigadier, and
+everything belonging to the Brigade, until I thought it a little too
+hard for a man who had had a Sunday School education in his young days
+to listen to, and I left him still cursing.'"
+
+"He will court-martial the Captain," said the Colonel, who had entered
+the tent, "for signal contempt of the Regular Service. I recollect a
+charge of that kind preferred by a Regular Lieutenant against an
+Adjutant of the ---- Maine, down in the Peninsula. In one of our marches
+the Adjutant had occasion to ride rapidly by the Regiment to which the
+Lieutenant belonged. The Lieutenant hailed him--told him to stop. The
+Adjutant knowing his duty, and that he had no authority to halt him,
+continued his pace, but found himself for nearly a month afterward in
+arrest under a charge of 'Signal contempt for the Regular Service.'"
+
+Sigel's hardy Teutons lined the road in the vicinity of New Baltimore,
+through which village the route lay on the following day. Part of his
+corps had some days previously occupied the mountain gaps in the Bull
+Run range on the left. Other troops, led by a Commander whose strategy
+was singularly efficacious to keep him out of fights, were passing to
+the front, leaving a fighting General of undoubted prowess in European
+and American history, in the rear. Inefficient himself, and perhaps
+designedly so, his policy could not, with safety to his own reputation,
+allow of efficiency elsewhere.
+
+That night our Regiment encamped in one of the old pine fields common in
+Virginia. The softness of the decaying foliage of the pine which covered
+the ground as a cushion was admirably adapted to repose, and upon it the
+men rested, while the gentle evening breeze sighed among the boughs
+above them, as if in sympathy with disappointed hopes and sacrifices
+made in vain.
+
+"Stragglers and marauders, sir," said a Sergeant of the Provost Guard,
+saluting the Colonel, who was one of the circle lying cozily about the
+fire, pointing as he spoke to a squad of way-worn, wo-begone men under
+guard in his rear. "Here is a list of their offences. I was ordered to
+report them for punishment."
+
+"A new wrinkle, that," said the Colonel, as the Sergeant left. "Our
+Brigadier must be acting upon his own responsibility. Our General of
+Division would certainly never have permitted such an opportunity slip
+for employing the time of officers in Courts-martial. That list would
+have kept one of our Division Courts in session at least three weeks,
+and have given the General himself an infinite amount of satisfaction in
+examining his French authorities, and in strictures upon the Records.
+What have we here, any how?"
+
+No. 1. "Straggling to a persimmon tree on the road-side."
+
+"That man," said a Lieutenant, "when he saw our Brigadier coming up,
+presented him with a couple of persimmons very politely. But it was no
+go; the General ordered him under guard and eat the persimmons as part
+of the punishment."
+
+"Well," rejoined the Colonel, "we'll let you off with guard duty for the
+night."
+
+No. 2. "Killing a shoat while the Regiment halted at noon."
+
+The man charged was a fine-looking young fellow whose only preparation
+for the musket, when he enlisted, was previous practice with the yard
+stick in a dry goods establishment. Intelligent and good-natured, he was
+popular in the command, and was never known to let his larder suffer.
+
+"Was it a Rebel pig?" inquired a bystander.
+
+"A most rebellious pig," replied he, bowing to the Colonel. "He gave us
+a great amount of trouble, and rebelled to the last." A laugh followed,
+interrupted by the Colonel, who desired to hear the circumstances of the
+case.
+
+"Right after we had halted on the other side of New Baltimore,"
+continued the man, "I saw the pig rooting about a corn shock, and as my
+haversack was empty, and myself hungry, I thought I could dispose of
+part of him to advantage, and before I had time to reflect about the
+order, I commenced running after him. Several others followed, and some
+officers near by stood looking at us. After skinning my hands and knees
+in trying to catch him by throwing myself upon him, I finally caught
+him. When I had him skinned, I gave a piece to all the officers who saw
+me, saving only a ham for myself, and I was dressing it when up came a
+Lieutenant of the Provost Guard and demanded it. I debated the matter as
+well as a keen appetite would allow, and finally coming to the
+conclusion that I could not serve my country as I should, if half
+starved, I resolved to keep it, and refused him, and he reported me, and
+here I am with it at your service," clapping his hand on a well filled
+haversack.
+
+One-half of the meat was confiscated, but the novelty of the sergeant's
+patriotic plea saved him further penalty.
+
+No. 3. Caught in a negro shanty, in company with an old wench.
+
+The crowd laughed; while the subject, a tall cadaverous-looking fellow,
+protested earnestly that he was only waiting while the wench baked him a
+hoe-cake.
+
+"Guard duty for the night," said the Colonel.
+
+"Poor devil! He will have to keep awake, and can't sing--'Sleeping I
+dream, love, dream, love, of thee'"--said the poetical Lieutenant, who
+chanced to be one of the group.
+
+No. 4. Caught by the General Commanding Division, twenty feet high on a
+persimmon tree, and Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 on the ground below; also
+"Lying."
+
+"Another persimmon crowd. Every night we are troubled with the persimmon
+business," said the Colonel; "but what does the 'also Lying' mean?"
+
+"Why," said a frank fellow of the crowd, "you see when the old General
+came up, I said it was a picket station, and that the man up the tree
+was looking out for the enemy. It was a big thing, I thought, but the
+General didn't see it, and he swore he would persimmon us."
+
+"Which meant," said the Colonel, "that you would lose your persimmons,
+and go on extra police duty for forty-eight hours each."
+
+The crowd were lectured upon straggling, that too frequent offence of
+Volunteers, and after a severe reprimand dismissed.
+
+The country abounded in persimmon trees, and their golden fruit was a
+sore temptation to teeth sharpened on army crackers. As the season
+advanced, and persimmons became more palatable, crowds would thus be
+brought up nightly for punishment. This summary procedure was an
+innovation by the Brigadier upon the Red-Tape formulary of
+Courts-martial, so rigidly adhered to, and fondly indulged in, by the
+General of Division. The Brigadier would frequently himself dispose of
+delinquencies of the kind, telling the boys in a manner that made them
+feel that he cared for their welfare, that they had been entrusted to
+him by the country for its service, and that he considered himself under
+obligations to their relatives and friends to see that while under his
+command their characters received no detriment, and while becoming good
+soldiers they would not grow to be bad citizens. He made them realize,
+that although soldiers they were still citizens; and many a man has left
+him all the better for a reprimand which reminded him of duties to
+relatives and society at large. How much nobility of soul might be
+spared to the country with care of this kind, on the part of commanders.
+Punishment is necessary--but how many to whom it is intrusted forget
+that in giving it a moral effect upon society, care should be taken
+that it may operate beneficially upon the individual. The General who
+crushes the soul out of his command by exacting infamous punishments for
+trivial offences, is but a short remove from the commander who would
+basely surrender it to the enemy on the barest pretext. Punishment has
+too often been connected with prejudice against Volunteers in the Army
+of the Potomac, controlled as it has been too much by martinets. That a
+nation of freemen could have endured so long the contumely of a proud
+military leader when his incapacity was so apparent, will be a matter of
+wonder for the historian. The inconsistency that would follow the great
+Napoleon in modelling an army and neglect his example in giving it
+mobility, with eminent propriety leaves the record of its exploits to
+depend upon the pen of a scion of the unmilitary House of Orleans.
+
+But the decree "thus far shalt thou come," forced upon an honest but
+blindly indulgent President by the People, who will not forget that
+power is derived from them, had already gone forth, although not yet
+officially announced to the Army; and it was during the week at
+Warrenton, our halting-place on the morrow, that the army, with the
+citizens at home, rejoiced that the work of staying the proud waves of
+imbecility, as well as insult, to our Administration, had commenced. The
+history of reforms is one of the sacrifice of blood, money, and time.
+Frightful bills of mortality, shattered finances, nineteen months of
+valuable time, do not in this case admit of an exception.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_Camp near Warrenton--Stability of the Republic--Measures, not Men,
+regarded by the Public--Removal of McClellan--Division Head-Quarters a
+House of Mourning--A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point
+Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box--Head-Quarter Murmurings and
+Mutterings--Departure of Little Mac and the Prince--Cheering by Word of
+Command--The Southern Saratoga--Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure._
+
+
+Writers prone to treat of the instability of Republics, will find
+serious matter to combat in the array of events that culminated at
+Warrenton. Without the blood that has usually characterized similar
+events in the history of Monarchies, in fact with scarcely a ripple upon
+the surface of our national affairs, a great military chieftain, or to
+speak truly, a commander who had endeavored, and who had the grandest of
+opportunities to become such, passed from his proud position as the
+leader of the chief army of the Republic, to the obscurity of private
+life. Proffered to a public, pliant, because anxious that its
+representatives in the field should have a worthy Commander, by an
+Administration eager to repair the disaster of Bull Run,--puffed into
+favor by almost the entire press of the country, the day had been when
+the loyalty of the citizen was measured by his admiration of General
+McClellan.
+
+Never did a military leader assume command so auspiciously. The
+resources of a mighty nation were lavishly contributed to the materiel
+of his army. Its best blood stood in his ranks. Indulged to an almost
+criminal extent by an Administration that in accordance with the wishes
+of the masses it represented, bowed at his beck and was overly
+solicitous to do his bidding, no wonder that this ordinary mind became
+unduly inflated. He could model his army upon the precedents set by the
+great Napoleon; he could surround himself by an immense Staff--the
+talent of which, however, but poorly represented the vigor of his
+army,--for nepotism and favoritism interfered to prevent that, as they
+will with common men; drill and discipline could make his army
+efficient,--for his subordinates were thorough and competent, and his
+men were apt pupils; but he himself could not add to all these the
+crowning glories of the field. Every thing was there but genius, that
+God-given gift; and that he did not prove to be a Napoleon resulted
+alone from a lack of brains.
+
+Now that the glare of the rocket has passed from our sky, and its stick
+has fallen quietly enough among the pines of New Jersey, citizens have
+opportunity for calm reflection. We are not justified, perhaps, in
+attributing to McClellan all the evils and errors that disfigure his
+tenure of office. Intellect equal to the position he could not create
+for himself, and ninety-nine out of one hundred men of average ability
+would not have descended from his balloon-like elevation with any better
+grace. It is in the last degree unjust to brand with disloyalty, conduct
+that seems to be a result natural enough to incompetency. That upon
+certain occasions he may have been used for disloyal purposes by
+designing men, may be the consequence of lack of discrimination rather
+than of patriotism.
+
+Whatever might have induced his conduct of the war, the nation has
+learned a lesson for all time. Generals who had grown grey in honorable
+service were rudely set aside for a Commander whose principal merit
+consisted in his having published moderately well compiled military
+books. Their acquiescence redounds to their credit; but their continued
+and comparatively calm submission in after times, when that General,
+regardless of soldierly merit, placed in high and honorable positions
+relatives and intimate friends, who could be but mere place-men,
+dependent entirely upon him for their honors, and committed to his
+interests, is strong proof of devoted patriotism. Slight hold had these
+neophytes upon the stern matter-of-fact fighting Generals, or the
+equally devoted and patriotic masses in ranks. In their vain glory they
+murmured and muttered during and subsequent to this week at Warrenton,
+as they had threatened previously, in regard to the removal of
+McClellan. They knew not the Power that backed the Bayonet. In the eye
+of the unreserved and determined loyalty of the masses, success was the
+test of popularity with any Commander. Not the shadow of an excuse
+existed for any other issue. Our resources of the materiel of war were
+well nigh infinite. Men could be had almost without number, at least
+equal to the Rebels in courage. There was, then, no excuse for inaction,
+and none knew it better than our reflecting rank and file.
+
+The effort to inspire popularity for McClellan had been untiring by his
+devotees in position in the army. In the outset it was successful. Like
+their friends at home, the men in ranks, during the dark days that
+succeeded Bull Run, eagerly caught at a name that received such
+honorable mention. That this flush of popularity did not increase until
+it became a steady flame like that which burned within the breasts of
+the veterans of the old French Empire, is because its subject lacked the
+commanding ability, decision of character, and fiery energy, that made
+statesmen do reverence, turned the tide of battle to advantage, and
+swept with resistless force over the plains of Italy and the mountains
+of Tyrol.
+
+It was with mingled feelings of pleasure and uncertainty, caused by the
+change, that the Regiment broke to the front in column of company, and
+encamped on a beautifully wooded ridge about two miles north of
+Warrenton. Pleasure upon account of the change--as any change must be
+for the better,--uncertainty, as to its character and extent. In their
+doubtful future, Generals shifted position, and succeeded each other,
+very much as dark specks appear and pass before unsteady vision. Who
+would be the successor? Would the change be radical? were questions that
+were discussed in all possible bearings around cheerful camp-fires.
+
+Whatever the satisfaction among subordinate officers and the ranks,
+Division Head-quarters was a house of mourning. To the General removed
+solely it owed its existence. Connected with his choice Corps, it had
+basked in the sunshine of his favor. With the removal already ordered,
+"the dread of something worse"--a removal nearer home was apprehended.
+As a Field Commander, the officer upon whose shoulders rested the
+responsibilities of the Division, was entirely unknown previously to his
+assuming command. His life hitherto had been of such a nature as not to
+add to his capacity as a Commander. Years of quiet clerkly duty in the
+Topographical Department may, and doubtless did in his case, make an
+excellent engineer or draughtsman, but they afford few men opportunities
+for improvement in generalship. During the McClellan regime this source
+furnished a heavy proportion of our superior officers. Why, would be
+difficult to say on any other hypothesis than that of favoritism. Their
+educational influences tend to a defensive policy, which history proves
+Generals of ability to have indulged in only upon the severest
+necessity. To inability to rise above these strictures of the school,
+may be traced the policy which has portrayed upon the historic page, to
+our lasting disgrace as a nation, the humiliating spectacle of a mighty
+and brave people, with resources almost unlimited, compelled for nearly
+two years to defend their Capital against armies greatly inferior to
+their own in men and means.
+
+Independently of these educational defects, as they must be called,
+there was nothing in either the character or person of the Division
+Commander to command respect or inspire fear. Eccentric to a most
+whimsical degree, his oddities were the jest of the Division, while they
+were not in the least relieved by his extreme nervousness and fidgety
+habits of body. That there was nothing to inspire fear is, however,
+subject to exception, as his whims kept subordinates in a continual
+fever. The art of being practical--adapting himself to circumstances--he
+had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in
+which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point.
+His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement.
+Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many
+occasions rendered him unfortunate in his intercourse with volunteer
+officers. Politeness with him, assumed the airs and grimaces of a French
+dancing-master, which personage he was not unfrequently and not inaptly
+said to resemble. Displeasure he would manifest by the oddest of
+gestures and volleys of the latest oaths, uttered in a nervous, half
+stuttering manner. Socially, his extensive educational acquirements made
+him a pleasant companion, and with a friend it was said he would drink
+as deep and long as any man in the Army of the Potomac. Once crossed,
+however, his malignity would be manifested by the most intolerable and
+petty persecution.
+
+"He has no judgment," said a Field-Officer of a Regiment of his command;
+a remark which, by the way, was a good summary of his character.
+
+"Why?" replied the officer to whom he was speaking.
+
+"I was out on picket duty," rejoined the other, "yesterday. We had an
+unnecessarily heavy Reserve, and one half of the men in it were allowed
+to rest without their belts and boxes. The General in the afternoon paid
+us a visit, and seeing this found fault, that the men were not kept
+equipped; observing at the same time that they could rest equally well
+with their cartridge boxes on; that when he was a Cadet at West Point he
+had ascertained by actual practice that it could be done."
+
+"Do you recollect, General," I remarked, "whether you had forty rounds
+of ball cartridge in your box then?"
+
+"He said he did not know that that made any difference."
+
+"Now considering that the fact of the boxes being filled makes all the
+difference, I say," continued the officer, "that the man who makes a
+remark such a the General made, is devoid of judgment."
+
+But he was connected both by ties of friendship and consanguinity with
+the hitherto Commander of the Army of the Potomac. His Adjutant-General
+was related to the same personage. The position of the latter, for which
+he was totally unfitted by his habits, was perhaps a condition precedent
+to the appointment of the General of Division.
+
+The fifth of November, a day destined to become celebrated hereafter in
+American as in English history, dawned not less inauspiciously upon the
+Head-quarters of the Corps. They too could not appreciate the dry humor
+of the order that commanded Little Mac to report at Trenton. They
+thought alone of the unwelcome reality--that it was but an American way
+of sending him to Coventry. The Commander of the Corps had been a great
+favorite at the Head-quarters of the army--perhaps because in this old
+West Point instructor the haughty dignity and prejudice against
+volunteers which characterized too many Regular officers, had its
+fullest personification. His Corps embraced the largest number of
+Regular officers. In some Regiments they were ridiculously, and for
+Uncle Sam expensively, plentiful,--some Companies having two or three
+Captains, two or three First or Second Lieutenants,--while perhaps the
+enlisted men in the Regiment did not number two hundred. But these
+supernumeraries were Fitz John's favorites, and whether they performed
+any other labor than sporting shoulder straps, regularly visiting the
+Paymasters, adjusting paper collars and cultivating moustaches, was a
+matter of seemingly small consequence, though during depressed national
+finances.
+
+The little patriotism that animated many of the officers attached to
+both of these Head-quarters, did not restrain curses deep if not loud.
+Pay and position kept them in the army at the outbreak of the
+Rebellion; and pay and position alone prevented their taking the same
+train from Warrenton that carried away their favorite Commander. A
+telegram of the Associated Press stated a few days later that a list of
+eighty had been prepared for dismissal. What evil genius averted this
+benefit to the country, the War Department best knows. It required no
+vision of the night, nor gift of soothsaying, to foretell the trouble
+that would result from allowing officers in important positions to
+remain in the army, who were under the strongest obligations to the
+General removed, devotedly attached to him, and completely identified
+with, and subservient to, his interests. It might at least be supposed
+that his policy would be persevered in, and that his interests would not
+suffer. So far the reform was not radical.
+
+"Colonel," said one of these martinets who occupied a prominent position
+upon the Staff of Prince Fitz John, as with a look of mingled contempt
+and astonishment he pointed to a Lieutenant who stood a few rods distant
+engaged in conversation with two privates of his command, "do you allow
+commissioned officers to converse with privates?"
+
+"Why not, sir? Those three men were intimate acquaintances at home. In
+fact, the Lieutenant was a clerk in a dry-goods establishment in which
+one of the privates was a junior partner."
+
+"All wrong, sir," replied the martinet. "They should approach a
+commissioned officer through a Sergeant. The Inspecting Officer will
+report you for laxity of discipline in case it continues, and place you
+under arrest."
+
+The Brigadier, when he heard of this conversation, intimated that should
+the Inspecting Officer attempt it, he would leave the Brigade limits
+under guard; and it was not attempted.
+
+Nonsense such as this is not only contemptible but criminal, when
+contrasted with the kind fellowship of Washington for his men,--his
+solicitude for their sufferings at Valley Forge,--Putnam sharing his
+scanty meals with privates of his command,--Napoleon learning the wants
+of his veterans from their own lips, and tapping a Grenadier familiarly
+upon the shoulder to ask the favor of a pinch from his snuff-box. Those
+worthies may rest assured that marquees pitched at Regulation distance,
+and access through non-commissioned officers, will not, if natural
+dignity be wanting, create respect. How greatly would the efficiency of
+the army have been increased, had the true gentility that characterized
+the noble soul of Colonel Simmons, who fell at Gaines' Mills, and that
+will always command reverence, been more general among his brother
+officers of the Regular Army.
+
+These evil results should not, however, lead to a wholesome condemnation
+of West Point. The advantages of the Institution have been abused, or
+rather neglected, by the great masses of the Loyal States. In our moral
+matter-of-fact business communities it has been too generally the case,
+that cadets have been the appointees of political favoritism, regardless
+of merit; and that the wild and often worthless son of influential and
+wealthy parents, who had grown beyond home restraint, and who gave
+little indication of a life of honor or usefulness, would be turned into
+the public inclosure at West Point to square his morals and his toes at
+the same time at public expense, and the act rejoiced at as a good
+family riddance. Thus in the Loyal States, the profession of arms had
+fallen greatly into disrepute previously to the outbreak of the
+Rebellion, and instead of being known as a respectable vocation, was
+considered as none at all. Had military training to some extent been
+connected with the common school education of the land, we would have
+gained in health, and would have been provided with an able array of
+officers for our noble army of Volunteers. Among other preparations for
+their infamous revolt, the Rebels did not fail to give this especial
+prominence. The Northern States have been great in peace; the material
+is being rapidly educated that will make them correspondingly great in
+war.
+
+"November's surly blasts" were baring the forests of foliage, when the
+order for the last Review by McClellan was read to the Troops. Mutinies
+and rumors of mutinies "from the most reliable sources" had been
+suspended above the Administration, like the threatening sword of
+Damocles; but Abraham's foot was down at last, and beyond murmurings and
+mutterings at disaffected Head-Quarters no unsoldierly conduct marked
+the reception of the order. So far from the "heavens being hung with
+black," as a few man-worshippers in their mad devotion would have
+wished, nature smiled beautifully fair. Such a sight could only be
+realized in Republican America. A military Commander of the greatest
+army upon the Continent, elevated in the vain-glory of dependent
+subordinates into a quasi-Dictatorship, was suddenly lowered from his
+high position, and his late Troops march to this last Review with the
+quiet formality of a dress parade. What cared those stern,
+self-sacrificing men in ranks, from whose bayonets that brilliant sun
+glistened in diamond splendor, for the magic of a name--the majesty of a
+Staff, gorgeous, although not clothed in the uniform desired by its late
+Chief. The measure of payment for toil and sacrifice with them, was
+progress in the prosecution of their holy cause. The thunders of the
+artillery that welcomed _him_ with the honor due to his rank, reminded
+_them_ to how little purpose, through shortcomings upon his part, those
+same pieces had thundered upon the Peninsula and at Antietam.
+
+Massed in close columns by division along the main road leading to
+Warrenton, the troops awaited the last of the grand pageants that had
+made the Army of the Potomac famous for reviews. Its late Commander, as
+he gracefully sat his bay, had not the nonchalance of manner that he
+manifested while reading a note and accompanying our earnest President
+in a former review at Sharpsburg; nor was the quiet dignity that he
+usually exhibited when at the head of his Staff, apparent. His manner
+seemed nervous, his look doubly anxious; troubled in the present, and
+solicitous as to the future. Conscious, too, doubtless, as he faced a
+nation's Representatives in arms, how he had "kept the word of promise
+to the ear," and how "he had broken it to the hope;" how while his
+reviews had revealed a mighty army of undoubted ability and eagerness
+for the fight, his indecision or proneness to delay had made its
+campaigns the laughing-stock of the world. His brilliant Staff clattered
+at his heels; but glittering surroundings were powerless to avert the
+memories of a winter's inactivity at Manassas, the delay at Yorktown,
+the blunders on the Chickahominy, or the disgrace of the day after
+Antietam. How closely such memories thronged upon this thinking
+soldiery, and how little men who leave families and business for the
+field, from the necessity of the case, care for men if their measures
+are unsuccessful, may be imagined, when the fact is known that this
+same Little Mac, once so great a favorite through efforts of the Press
+and officers with whom he had peopled the places in his gift, received
+his last cheers from some Divisions of that same Army by word of
+command.
+
+          "A long farewell to all his greatness."
+
+Imbecile in politics as in war, he cannot retrieve it by cringing to
+party purposes. The desire that actuates our masses and demands able and
+earnest leaders has long since dissolved party lines.
+
+This leave-taking was followed a few days later by that of the Corps
+Commander. Troubled looks, shadows that preceded his dark future, were
+plainly visible as the Prince passed up and down the lines of his late
+command.
+
+Another day passed, and with light hearts the men brightened their
+muskets for a Review by their new Commander, Major-General Burnside, or
+"Burney," as they popularly called the Hero of Carolina celebrity.
+
+But the day did not seem to be at hand that should have completed the
+reform by sweeping and garnishing disaffected, not to say disloyal
+Head-Quarters--removing from command men who were merely martinets, and
+who were in addition committed body and soul to the interests of their
+late Commander, and who, had they been in receipt of compensation from
+Richmond, could not have more completely labored by their half-hearted,
+inefficient, and tyrannizing course, to crush the spirit of our
+soldiery.
+
+"What's the matter with Old Pigey?" inquired a Sergeant, detailed on
+guard duty at Division Head-Quarters, as he saluted his Captain, on one
+of these evenings at Warrenton.
+
+"Why?" rejoined the Captain.
+
+"The General," continued the Sergeant, "was walking up and down in front
+of his marquee almost all of last night, talking to himself, muttering,
+and at almost every other step stamping and swearing. He had a bully old
+mad on, I tell you, Captain. He went it in something of this style."
+
+And the sergeant himself strode up and down, muttering and stamping and
+swearing, to the great amusement of the Captain and some bystanders.
+
+The unwillingness to bow to the dictation of the President as
+Commander-in-Chief in his most righteous removal of their favorite,
+caused much heart-burning, and gave rise to much disloyal conduct. That
+it was tolerated at all was owing to the unappreciated indulgence or
+hesitation of the Administration, lest it should undertake too much. The
+operation, to have been skilful and complete, required nerve. That
+article so necessary for this crisis is in the ranks, and let us trust
+that for the future it will be found in greater abundance at Washington.
+
+The Southern Saratoga, as Warrenton has been styled among the
+fashionables of the South, has much to commend it in situation and
+scenery, as a place of residence. The town itself is an odd jumble of
+old and new buildings, and is badly laid out, or rather not laid out at
+all, as the streets make all possible angles with each other. Yankee
+enterprise appears to have had something to do with the erection of the
+later buildings. Like other towns of that neighborhood its cemetery is
+heavily peopled with Rebel dead. At the time of our occupancy many of
+its larger buildings were still occupied as hospitals.
+
+On the day of McClellan's departure the streets were crowded with
+officers and men, and the sympathies of the Rebel residents seemed
+strangely in unison with those of the chieftain's favorites. The
+representatives of the clannish attachments which made McClellanism a
+species of Masonry in the army, were there in force. In these banded
+interests brotherly love took the place of patriotism. Little wonder!
+looking at the record of the McClellan campaigns, that the Rebels
+present fraternized with these devotees in their grief.
+
+"You have thrown away your ablest commander," said an elderly man, of
+intelligent and gentlemanly appearance, clad in the uniform of a surgeon
+of the Rebel army, who stood conversing with one of our own surgeons, on
+the sidewalk of the main street of the place, while the crowd gathered
+to witness the departure of the General.
+
+"Do you really think so?" rejoined the Union Surgeon, as he earnestly
+eyed the speaker.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the Rebel, emphatically. "It is not only my opinion but
+the opinion of our Generals of ability, that in parting with McClellan
+you lose the only General you have who has shown any strategic ability."
+
+"If that be your opinion, sir," was the decided reply, "the sooner we
+are rid of him the better."
+
+And to this reply the country says, Amen!
+
+"But what a shame it is that military genius is so little appreciated by
+the Administration, and that he is removed just at this time! Why, I
+heard our Colonel say that he had heard the General say, that in a few
+days more, he would have won a decisive victory," remarked a young
+officer, in a jaunty blue jacket, to a companion, gesticulating as he
+spoke, with a cigar between the first and second fingers of his right
+hand.
+
+An older officer, who overheard the remark, observed, drily:--"He was
+not removed for what he would do, but for what he had done."
+
+"And for what he had not done," truthfully added another.
+
+Never had General, burdened with so many sins of omission and
+commission, as the conversation indicated, been so leniently dealt with,
+now that the Rebels in their favorite, and with him successful game of
+hide and seek, had again given him the slip, and were only in his front
+to annoy. As they had it completely in their power to prevent a general
+engagement at that point, his remark as to what would have been done was
+a very rotten twig, caught at in the vain hope of breaking his fall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_A Skulker and the Dutch Doctor--A Review of the Corps by Old Joe--A
+Change of Base; what it means to the Soldier, and what to the
+Public--Our Quarter-Master and General Hooker--The Movement by the Left
+Flank--A Division General and Dog-driving--The Desolation of Virginia--A
+Rebel Land-Owner and the Quarter-Master--"No Hoss, Sir!"--The Poetical
+Lieutenant unappreciated--Mutton or Dog?--Desk Drudgery and Senseless
+Routine._
+
+
+"It's about time, Bill, for you to have another sick on," said a lively
+lad, somewhat jocosely, as he rubbed away at his musket-barrel, on one
+of our last mornings at the Camp, near Warrenton. "Fighting old Joe has
+the Corps now, and he will review us to-day, the Captain says, and after
+that look out for a move."
+
+"Don't say," drawled out the man addressed; a big, lubberly fellow,
+famous in the Regiment for shirking duty--who, when picket details were
+expected, or a march in prospect, would set a good example of
+punctuality in promptly reporting at Surgeon's call, or as the Camp
+phrase had it, "stepping up for his quinine." "Well," continued he,
+"Lord knows what I'll do. I've had the rheumatics awful bad," clapping
+at the same time one hand on his hip, and the other on his right
+shoulder, "the last day or two, and then the chronical diarrhoear."
+
+"You had better go in on rheumatism, Bill," broke in the first speaker.
+"The Doctor will let you off best on that."
+
+"That's played out, isn't it, Bill," chimed in another; and to Bill's
+disgust, as he continued, "It don't go with the little Dutch Doctor
+since Sharpsburg. Every time his Company's turn would come for picket,
+while we were at that Camp, Bill would be a front-rank man at the
+Hospital, with a face as long as a rail, and twisted as if he had just
+had all his back teeth pulled. The little Dutchman would yell out
+whenever he would see him--'What for you come? Eh? You tam shneak.
+Rheumatism, eh? In hip?' And the Doctor would punch his shoulder and
+hip, and pinch his arms and legs until Bill would squirm like an eel
+under a gig. 'Here, Shteward,' said the Doctor the last time, as he
+scribbled a few words on a small piece of paper, 'Take this; make
+application under left ear, and see if dis tam rheumatism come not out.'
+Bill followed the Steward, and in a few minutes came back to quarters
+ornamented with a fly-blister as big as a dollar under his left ear.
+Next morning Bill didn't report, but he's been going it since on
+diarrhoea."
+
+"He wasn't smart, there," observed another. "He ought to have done as
+little Burky of our mess did. He'd hurry to quarters, take the blister
+off, clap it on again next morning when he'd report, and he'd have the
+little Dutchman swearing at the blister for not being 'wors a tam.'"
+
+Bill took the sallies of the crowd with the quiet remark that their turn
+for the sick list would come some day.
+
+The Review on that day was a grand affair. The fine-looking manly form
+of Old Joe, as, in spite of a bandaged left ancle not yet recovered
+from the wound at Antietam, and that kept the foot out of the stirrup,
+he rode down the line at a gait that tested the horsemanship of his
+followers, was the admiration of the men. In his honest and independent
+looking countenance they read, or thought they could, character too
+purely republican to allow of invidious distinctions between men, who,
+in their country's hour of need, had left civil pursuits at heavy
+sacrifices, and those who served simply because the service was to them
+the business of life. With hearts that kept lively beat with the
+regimental music as they marched past their new Commander, they rejoiced
+at this mark of attention to the necessities of the country, which
+removed an Officer, notorious as a leader of reserves, and placed them
+under the care of a man high on the list of fighting Generals.
+"Waterloo," says the historic or rather philosophic novelist of France,
+"was a change of front of the universe." The results of that contest are
+matter of record, and justify the remark. At Warrenton a great Republic
+changed front, and henceforth the milk and water policy of conciliating
+"our Southern Brethren" ranked as they are behind bristling bayonets, or
+of intimidating them by a mere show of force, must give way to active
+campaigning and heavy blows.
+
+A rainy, misty morning a day or two after the review, saw the Corps pass
+through Warrenton, en route for the Railroad Junction, commencing the
+change of direction by the left flank, ordered by the new Commander of
+the Army. The halt for the night was made in a low piece of woodland
+lying south of the railroad. In column of Regiments the Division
+encamped, and in a space of time incredible to those not familiar with
+such scenes, knapsacks were unslung and the smoke of a thousand
+camp-fires slowly struggled upwards through the falling rain. Its
+pelting was not needed to lull the soldiers, weary from the wet march
+and slippery roads, to slumber.
+
+At early dawn they left the Junction and its busy scenes--its lengthy
+freight-trains, and almost acres of baggage-wagons, to the rear, and
+struck the route assigned the Grand Division, of which they were part,
+for Fredericksburg. "A change of base" our friends will read in the
+leaded headings of the dailies, and pass it by as if it were a transfer
+of an article of furniture from one side of the room to the other.
+Little know they how much individual suffering from heavy knapsacks and
+blistered feet, confusion of wagon-trains, wrangling and swearing of
+teamsters, and vexation in almost infinite variety, are comprised in
+these few words. It is the army that moves, however, and the host of
+perplexities move with it, all unknown to the great public, and
+transient with the actors themselves as bubbles made by falling rain
+upon the lake. The delays incident to a wagon-train are legion.
+Occurring among the foremost wagons, they increase so rapidly that
+notwithstanding proper precaution and slowness in front, a rear-guard
+will often be kept running. The profanity produced by a single chuck
+hole in a narrow road appears to increase in arithmetical proportion as
+the wagons successively approach, and teamsters in the rear find their
+ingenuity taxed to preserve their reputation for the vice with their
+fellows.
+
+Why negroes are not more generally employed as teamsters is a mystery.
+They are proverbially patient and enduring. Both the interests of
+humanity and horseflesh would be best subserved by such employment, and
+the ranks would not be reduced by the constant and heavy details of
+able-bodied men for that duty. Capital and careful horsemen are to be
+found among the contrabands of Virginia, and many a poor beast, bad in
+harness because badly treated, would rejoice at the change.
+
+Quarter-masters, Wagon-masters, Commissaries, _et id genus omne_, have
+their peculiar troubles. Our Regiment was particularly favored in a
+Quarter-Master of accomplished business tact, whose personal supervision
+over the teams during a march was untiring, and whose tongue was equally
+tireless in rehearsing to camp crowds, after the march was over, the
+troubles of the day, and how gloriously he surmounted them. In his
+department he held no divided command.
+
+"Get out of my train with that ambulance. You can't cut me off in that
+style," he roared in an authoritative manner to an ambulance driver, who
+had slipped in between two of his wagons on the second day of our march.
+
+"My ambulance was ordered here, sir! I have General ----" The driver's
+reply was here interrupted by the abrupt exclamation of the
+Quarter-Master--
+
+"I don't care a d--n if you have Old Joe himself inside. I command this
+train and you must get out." And get out the driver did, at the
+intimation of his passenger, who, to the surprise of the Quarter-Master,
+notwithstanding his assertion, turned out to be no less a personage than
+General Hooker himself.
+
+"It is the law of the road," said the General, good-humoredly--candid to
+his own inconvenience--"and we must obey it."
+
+This ready obedience upon the part of the General was better in effect
+than any order couched in the strongest terms for the enforcement of
+discipline. The incident was long a frequent subject of conversation,
+and added greatly to his popularity as a commander. The men were fond
+of contrasting it with the conduct of the General of Division, who but a
+few days later cursed a poor teamster with all manner of profanely
+qualifying adjectives because he could not give to the General and his
+Staff the best part of a difficult road.
+
+But perhaps the men held their General of Division to too strict an
+accountability. He was still laboring under the spell of Warrenton. His
+nervous system had doubtless been deranged by the removal of his
+favorite Chief, or rather Dictator, as he had hoped he might be. "No one
+could command the army but McClellan," the General had said in his
+disgust--a disgust that would have driven him from the service, but
+that, fortunately for himself and unfortunately for his country, it was
+balanced by the pay and emoluments of a Brigadiership. Reluctant to
+allow Burnside quietly, a Cæsar's opportunity to "cover his baldness
+with laurels," his whimsical movements, now galloping furiously and
+purposeless from front to rear, and from rear to front of his command,
+cursing the officers,--and that for fancied neglect of duty,--poorly
+concealed the workings of his mind.
+
+In one of these rapid rides, his eye caught sight of a brace of young
+hounds following one of the Sergeants.
+
+"Where did those dogs come from?"
+
+"They have followed me from the last wood, sir."
+
+"Let them go, sir, this instant. Send them back, sir. D--n you, sir,
+I'll teach you to respect private property," replied the General,
+deploying his staff at the same time to assist in driving the dogs back,
+as notwithstanding the efforts of the Sergeant to send them to the rear,
+they crouched at a respectful distance and eyed him wistfully. "D--n
+you, sir, I am the General commanding the Division, sir, and by G--d,
+sir, I command you, as such, to send those dogs back, sir!" nervously
+stammered the General as he rode excitedly from one side of the road to
+the other in front of the Sergeant.
+
+The affair speedily became ridiculous. Driving dogs was evidently with
+the General a more congenial employment than manoeuvring men. But his
+efforts in the one proved as unsuccessful as in the other, as
+notwithstanding the aid afforded by his followers, the dogs would turn
+tail but for a short distance. After swearing most _dogmatically_, as an
+officer remarked, he turned to resume his ride to the head of the
+column, but had not gone ten yards before there was a whistle for the
+dogs. Squab was sent back to ferret out the offender. The whistling
+increased, and shortly the whole Staff and the Regimental officers were
+engaged in an attempt at its suppression. But in vain. Whistling in
+Company A, found echoes in Company B; and after some minutes of
+fruitless riding hither and thither the General was forced to retire
+under a storm of all kinds of dog-calls, swelled in volume by the
+adjacent Regiments.
+
+That authority should be thus abused by the General in endeavoring to
+enforce his ridiculous order, and set at naught by the men in thus
+mocking at obedience, is to be deprecated. The men took that method of
+rebuking the inconsistency, which would permit Regular and many
+Volunteer Regiments to be followed by all manner of dogs,
+
+          "Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
+          And cur of low degree,"
+
+and yet refuse them the accidental company of but a brace of canines. A
+simple report of the offender, supposing the Sergeant to have been one,
+would have been the proper course, and would have saved a General of
+Division the disgrace of being made a laughing-stock for his command.
+
+"Talent is something: but tact is everything," said an eminent man, and
+nowhere has the remark a more truthful application than in the army.
+
+A favorite employment after the evening halt, during this three days'
+march, was the gathering of mushrooms. The old fields frequent along the
+route abounded with them, and many a royal meal they furnished. To
+farmers' sons accustomed to the sight of close cultivation, these old
+fields, half covered with stunted pines, sassafras, varieties of spice
+wood, and the never-failing persimmon tree, were objects of curiosity.
+It was hard to realize that we were marching through a country once
+considered the Garden of America, whose bountiful supplies and large
+plantations had become classic through the pen of an Irving and other
+famous writers. Fields princely in size, but barren as Sahara;
+buildings, once comfortable residences, but now tottering into ruin, are
+still there, but "all else how changed." The country is desolation
+itself. Game abounds, but whatever required the industry of man for its
+continuance has disappeared.
+
+Civilization, which in younger States has felled forests, erected
+school-houses, given the fertility of a garden to the barren coast of
+the northern Atlantic and the wild-wood of the West, could not coalesce
+with the curse of slavery, and Virginia has been passed by in her onward
+march. This field of pines that you see on our right, whose tops are so
+dense and even as to resemble at a distance growing grain, may have been
+an open spot over which Washington followed his hounds in
+ante-revolutionary days. The land abounds in memories. The very names of
+the degenerate families who eke out a scanty subsistence on some corner
+of what was once an extensive family seat, remind one of the old
+Colonial aristocracy. Reclamation of the soil, as well as deliverance of
+the enslaved, must result from this civil war. Both worth fighting for.
+So "Forward, men," "Guide right," as in very truth we are in Divine
+Providence guided.
+
+The long-haired, furtive-looking fathers and sons, representatives of
+all this ancient nobility, after having given over their old homesteads
+to their female or helpless male slaves, and massed their daughters and
+wives apparently in every tenth house, were keeping parallel pace with
+us on the lower bank of the Rappahannock. It was the inevitable logic of
+the law of human progress, declaring America to be in reality the land
+of the free, that compelled these misguided, miserable remnants of an
+aristocracy, to shiver in rags around November camp-fires. "They are
+joined to their idols"--but now that after years of legislative
+encroachment upon the rights of suffering humanity, they engage in a
+rebellious outbreak against a God-given Government, we will not
+let them alone in an idolatry that desolates the fair face of nature
+and causes such shameful degeneracy of the human race. Justice! slow,
+but still sure and retributive justice! How sublimely grand in her
+manifestations! After years of patient endurance of the proud contumely
+of South Carolina, New England granite blocks up the harbor of
+Charleston--Massachusetts volunteers cook their coffee in the fireplaces
+of the aristocratic homesteads of Beaufort, and negroes rally to a
+roll-call at Bunker Hill, but as volunteers in a war which insures them
+liberty, and not as slaves, as was once vainly prophesied.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Who commands you?" inquired a long, lean, slightly stooped,
+sallow-faced man of about fifty, with eyes that rolled in all directions
+but towards the officer he addressed, and long hair thrown back of his
+ears in such a way as to make up an appearance that would readily
+attract the attention of a police officer.
+
+"I command this Regiment, sir," replied the Colonel, who, at the end of
+the day's march, was busied in directing a detail where to pitch the
+Head-quarter tents.
+
+"Goin' to stay yer--right in this meadow?" continued the man, in the
+half negro dialect common with the whites of the South.
+
+"That is what we purpose doing, sir. Are you the owner?"
+
+"Y-a-a-s," drawled out the man, pulling his slouch felt still further
+over his eyes. "This meadow is the best part of my hull farm."
+
+"Great country, this," broke in the Quarter-Master. "Why a kill-deer
+couldn't fly over it without carrying a knapsack. You don't think that
+camping upon this meadow will injure it any, do you?"
+
+"Right smart it will, I reckon," rejoined the man, his eyes kindling
+somewhat, "right smart, it will. $1500 at least."
+
+"What! What did the land cost you?"
+
+"Wall, I paid at the rate of $15 the acre for 118 acres, and the
+buildings and 12 acres on it are in this meadow, and the best bit of it,
+too."
+
+"Then you want to make us pay nearly what the whole farm cost you for
+using the meadow a single night?"
+
+"Wall, I reckon as how the rails will all be gone, and the sod all cut
+up, and----"
+
+"Well, I reckon," interrupted the Quarter-Master, "that you ought to
+prove your loyalty before you talk about claiming damages from Uncle
+Sam."
+
+"Oh! I'm on nary side, on nary side;" and he looked half suspiciously
+about the crowd, now somewhat increased. "I'm too old; besides, my left
+knee is crippled up bad," limping as he said so, to sustain his
+assertion.
+
+"Where are your children?"
+
+"My two boys and son-in-law are off with the South, but I'm not
+'countable for them."
+
+"Well, sir, you'll have to prove your loyalty before you get a receipt
+from me for any amount."
+
+"Prove my loyalty?" he muttered, at the same time looking blank. "What
+sort of swearin' have you for that?"
+
+"Don't swear him at all, at all," broke in the little Irish Corporal.
+"Swearing is no substitute for swinging. Faith! he's up to that
+business. It's mate and drink to him. Make him whistle Yankee Doodle or
+sing Hail Columbia. Be jabers, it is not in his looks to do it without
+choking."
+
+Terence's suggestion met with a general laugh of approval. The old
+fellow, finding himself in a crowd slow to appreciate his claim for
+damages when his loyalty was at a discount, made off towards his house,
+a dingy, two-story frame near by, reminded by the Colonel as he left
+that he would be expected to keep closely within doors while the troops
+were in that vicinity.
+
+This sovereign of the soil was a fair specimen of the landed gentry of
+Virginia. "On nary side," as he expressed it, when the Federal troops
+were in his neighborhood, and yet malignant and dastardly enough to
+maltreat any sick or wounded Union soldier that chance might throw into
+his hands. The less reserved tongues of his daughters told plainly
+enough where the family stood on the great question of the day. But
+while they recounted to some of the junior officers who were always on
+the alert in making female acquaintances, their long lists of famous
+relatives, they had all the eagerness of the Yankee, so much despised in
+the Richmond prints, in disposing of half-starved chickens and heavy
+hoe-cakes at extortionate prices. With their dickering propensities
+there was an amount of dirt on their persons and about the premises, and
+roughness in their manners, that did great discredit to the memory of
+Pocahontas.
+
+"You have the old horse tied up close," casually remarked a spruce young
+Sergeant who, in obedience to orders from Division Head-quarters, had
+just stationed a guard in the yard of the premises, alluding to an old,
+worn-out specimen of horseflesh tied up so closely to the house that his
+head and neck were almost a straight line.
+
+"Yon's no hoss, sir. It's a mare," quickly retorted one of those
+black-eyed beauties.
+
+The polite Sergeant, who had dressed himself with more than usual care,
+in the expectation of meeting the ladies, colored somewhat, but the
+young lady, in a matter-of-course strain, went on to say,
+
+"She's the only one left us, too. Preston and Moncure took the rest with
+them, and they say they've nearly used 'em up chasing you Yanks."
+
+Her unlady-like demeanor and exulting allusion to the Rebel cavalry
+tested to the utmost the Sergeant's qualities as a gentleman. A dicker
+for a pair of chickens, accomplished by his substituting a little ground
+coffee for a great sum in greenbacks, soon brought about a better
+understanding, however, on the part of the damsel.
+
+A few hours later saw the Adjutant and our poetical Lieutenant snugly
+seated on split-bottomed chairs in a dirty kitchen. Random conversation,
+in which the women let slip no opportunity of reminding their visitors
+of the soldierly qualities of the Rebels, interrupted by the occasional
+bleating of sheep and bawling of calves in the cellar, made the
+evening's entertainment novel and interesting. So much so that at a late
+hour the Lieutenant, who had invested closely the younger of the two,
+said, half sighing, as he gave her a fond look,
+
+          "With thee conversing, I forget all time,
+          All----"
+
+"Wall, I reckon I don't," broke in the matter-of-fact young lady. "Sal,
+just kick yon door around." As Sal did her bidding, and the full moon on
+the face of an old fashioned corner clock was disclosed, she continued,
+"It's just ten minutes after eleven, and you Yanks had better be off."
+
+Although the Adjutant was
+
+          "Like steel amid the din of arms;
+          Like wax when with the fair,"
+
+this lack of appreciation of poetic sentiment so abruptly shown, brought
+him out in a roar, and completely disconcerted the Lieutenant. They both
+retired speedily, and long after, the circumstance was one of the
+standing jokes of the camp.
+
+One of the most prominent and eagerly wished-for occurrences in camp, is
+the arrival of the mail. The well filled bag, looking much like one of
+the bags of documents forwarded by Congressmen for private purposes at
+Uncle Sam's expense, was emptied out on the sod that evening in front of
+the Colonel's marquee, and bundles containing boots, tobacco, bread,
+clothing of all kinds, eatables, and what-not,--for at that time Uncle
+Sam's army mails did a heavy express business,--were eyed curiously, by
+the crowd impatient for distribution. Most singular of all in shape and
+feeling was a package, heavily postmarked, and addressed to the Colonel.
+It contained what was a God-send to the larder of the mess,--a quarter
+of fine tender meat. But what kind of animal, was the query. The Major,
+who was a Nimrod in his own locality, after the most thorough
+inspection, and the discovery of a short straight hair upon it,
+pronounced it venison, or young kid, and confirmed the Colonel in the
+belief that he had been remembered by one of his Western friends. But
+deer or dog was a matter of indifference to hungry campaigners. A hearty
+meal was made of it, and speculation continued until the Brigadier, who
+had perpetrated the joke upon the Colonel, saw fit, long after, to
+reveal that it was mutton that had been taken from some marauders during
+the day's march.
+
+During the first and second days of the march, cannonading had been
+heard at intervals on the right flank. This day, however, the silence
+was ominous; and now at its close, with our army in close proximity to
+Fredericksburg, it indicated peaceable, unopposed possession, or delay
+of our own forces. But of the delay and its cause, provoking as it was,
+and costly as it has proved, enough has probably been written. An
+Investigating Committee has given the public full records. If we do not
+learn that delinquents have been punished, let us hope that the warning
+has been sufficient to avoid like difficulties in the future.
+
+Our army quietly turned into camp among the wooded heights of Stafford,
+opposite the town of Fredericksburg. The Rebels as quietly collected
+their forces and encamped on the heights upon the opposite side of the
+river. Day by day we could see them busily at work upon their
+fortifications. Each morning fresh mounds of earth appeared at different
+points in the semi-circular range of hills bounding Fredericksburg upon
+the South and West. This valuable time was made use of by the pontoon
+train at the rate of four miles per day.
+
+The three Grand Divisions, now that their stately march by the flank was
+over, had settled comfortably down among the hills of Stafford. Wood and
+water, essentials for camp comfort, were to be found in abundance. While
+the little parleying between the Commander of the Right Grand Division
+and the civil authorities of Fredericksburg continued, matters were
+somewhat in suspense. But a gradual quiet crept over the army, and in a
+few short weeks that heavily timbered country was one vast field of
+stumps, with here and there clusters of pine trees left standing for the
+comfort of different Head-quarters. As the timber disappeared, the tents
+and huts of the army before concealed in the forests were disclosed, and
+the whole country in the vicinity of the railroad was a continuous camp.
+The few open fields or barrens afforded fine review and drill grounds,
+and the toils of the march were scarcely over before in all directions
+could be heard the steady tramp of solid columns engaged in the
+evolutions of the field.
+
+Those who think that duties are light in camp, know nothing of the
+legions of reports, statements in duplicate and triplicate, required by
+the too often senseless formalities of red tape. These duties vary
+greatly in different divisions. With a place-man, mechanical in his
+movements, and withal not disposed to lighten labor, they multiply to a
+surprising extent, and subs intrusted with their execution often find
+that the most laborious part of the service is drudgery at the desk.
+Night after night would repose at Regimental Head-quarters be
+interrupted by repetitious and in many cases inconsistent orders, the
+only purpose of which appeared to be, to remind drowsy Adjutants and
+swearing Sergeant-Majors that the Commanding General of Division still
+ruled at Division Head-quarters, and that he was most alive between the
+hours of nine and twelve at night. Independently of the fact that in
+most cases in ordinary camp-life there was no reason why these orders
+should not have issued in business hours, their multiplicity was a
+nuisance. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but in all conscience
+when the pen has been through necessity ignored, and the sword is
+uplifted for rapid and earnest blows, and the heart of a nation hangs in
+heavy suspense upon its movements, these travelling Bureaux had better
+be abolished. Superadded to all this, was the labor resulting from the
+mania for Court-Martialing that raged at Division Head-quarters.
+Mechanical in its movements, not unfrequently malignant in its designs,
+officer after officer, earnest in purpose, but in some instances perhaps
+deficient in detail, had been sacrificed to an absolutism that could
+order the charges, detail the Court, play the part of principal witness
+for the prosecution, and confirm the proceedings.
+
+"Our volunteer force will never amount to much, until we attain the
+exact discipline of the French service," was the frequent remark of a
+General of Division. Probably not. But how much would its efficiency be
+increased, had the policy of the great Napoleon, from whose genius the
+French arms derive their lustre, prevailed, in detailing for desk duty
+in quiet departments the mechanical minds of paper Generals. His master
+tact in assigning to commanders legitimate spheres of work, and with it
+the untiring zeal of a Cromwell that would run like a purifying fire
+through the army, imparting to it its own impetuosity, and ridding it of
+jealousy and disaffection, were greatly needed in this Grand Army of the
+Potomac. Nobler men never stood in ranks! Holier banners never flaunted
+in the sunlight of Heaven! God grant its directing minds corresponding
+energy and wisdom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+_Red Tape and the Soldier's Widow--Pigeon-holing at Head-Quarters and
+Weeping at the Family Fireside--A Pigeon-hole General Outwitted--Fishing
+for a Discharge--The Little Irish Corporal on Topographical
+Engineers--Guard Duty over a Whiskey Barrel._
+
+
+                                    ----, Penna., Nov.--, 1862.
+
+     MY DEAR GEORGE:--This is the first spare time that I have been able
+     to get during the last week for a letter to my dear husband. And
+     now that there is quiet in the house, and our dear little boys are
+     sound asleep, and the covers nicely tucked about them in their
+     little trundle, I feel that I can scarcely write. There is such a
+     heaviness upon my heart. When I saw the crowd at the telegraph
+     office this morning while on my way to church, and heard that they
+     were expecting news of a great battle on the Rappahannock, such a
+     feeling of helplessness, sinking of the heart, and dizziness came
+     over me, that I almost fell upon the pavement. The great battle
+     that all expect so eagerly, may mean our dear little children
+     fatherless and myself a widow. Oh, George, I feel so sad and
+     lonely, and then every footstep I hear at the door I am afraid some
+     one is coming with bad news. Your last letter, too, I do not like.
+     I am afraid that more is the matter with you than you are willing
+     to admit. You promised me, too, that you would apply for a
+     furlough. Lieut. H---- has been twice at home since he went out.
+     You know he is in Sickles' Division.
+
+     Our precious little boys keep asking continually when papa will
+     come home. Little Georgie says he is a "du-du," you know that is
+     what he calls a soldier, and he gets the old sword you had in the
+     three months' service, and struts up and down at a great rate. They
+     can both say the Lord's prayer now, and every night when they get
+     through with it, they ask God to bless papa and mamma, and all the
+     Union "du-dus." I do wish that you could see them in their little
+     "Gadibaldis," as Harry calls them. When I see Mr. B----and others
+     take their evening walks with their children, just as you used to
+     do with Georgie, it takes all the grace and all the patriotism I
+     can muster to keep from murmuring.
+
+     Mr. G---- says that we need not trouble about the rent this
+     quarter, that he will wait until you are paid. The neighbors, too,
+     are very kind to me, and I have been kept so busy with work from
+     the shops, that I have made enough to pay all our little expenses.
+     But for all, George, I cannot help wishing every minute of the day
+     that "this cruel war was over" and you safe back. At a little
+     sewing party that we had the other day, Em D---- sang that old song
+     "When wild war's deadly blast was blown," that you used to read to
+     me so often, and when I heard of "sweet babes being fatherless,"
+     and "widows mourning," I burst into tears. I do not know why it is,
+     but I feel as if expecting bad news continually. Our little boys
+     say "don't cry, mamma," in such a way when I put them to bed at
+     night, and tell them that I kiss them for you too, that it makes me
+     feel all the worse. I know it is wrong. I know our Heavenly Father
+     knows what is best for us. I hope by this time you have learned to
+     put your trust in him. That is the best preparation for the
+     battle-field.
+
+     Do not fail to come home if you can. God bless you, George, and
+     protect you, is the prayer of
+
+                                   Your loving wife,
+                                               MARY.
+
+On a low cot in the corner of a hospital tent, near Potomac Creek,
+propped up by some extra blankets kindly loaned him by his comrades,
+toward the close of a December afternoon, lay a slightly-built, rather
+handsome man of about thirty, holding with trembling hand the above
+letter, and hurriedly gathering its contents with an eager but unsteady
+eye. The Surgeon noticing the growing flush upon his already fevered
+cheek, suggested that he had better have the letter read to him. So
+intent was the reader, that the suggestion was twice repeated before
+heeded, and then only drew the remark "Mary and the boys." A sudden fit
+of coughing that appeared to tear the very life strings came upon him,
+and at its close he fell back exhausted upon his pillow.
+
+"What luck, Adjutant?" inquired the Surgeon in a low tone, as he went
+forward, cautiously treading among the sick, to admit that officer into
+the tent.
+
+The Adjutant with a shake of the head remarked that the application had
+gone up two weeks previously from Brigade Head-quarters, and that
+nothing had been heard of it since. "As usual," he added, "pigeon-holed
+at Division Head-quarters."
+
+"Poor Wilson has been inquiring about it all day, and I very much fear
+that should it come now, it will be too late. He has failed rapidly
+to-day."
+
+"So bad as that? I will send up to Division Head-quarters immediately."
+
+The Lieutenant, a week previously, had been brought into the hospital
+suffering from a heavy cold and fever in connexion with it. For some
+weeks he had been in delicate health; so much so, in fact, that the
+Surgeon had urged him to apply for a furlough, and had stated in his
+certificate to the same, that it was absolutely necessary for the
+preservation of his life. As the Surgeon stated, a furlough, that might
+then have been beneficial, promised now to be of little avail. The
+disease had assumed the form of congestion of the lungs, and the
+Lieutenant seemed rapidly sinking.
+
+When the Adjutant left the hospital tent he sought out a Captain, an
+intimate acquaintance of the Lieutenant's, and charged him with a
+special inquiry at Head-quarters, as to the success of the application
+for a furlough. Thither the Captain repaired, through the well trodden
+mud and slush of the camp ground. The party of young officers within the
+tent of the Adjutant-General appeared to be in a high state of
+enjoyment, and that functionary himself retained just presence of mind
+sufficient to assure the Captain, after hearing his statement and urgent
+inquiry--"that there was no time now to look--that there were so d--n
+many papers he could not keep the run of them. These things must take
+their regular course, Captain,--regular course, you know. That's the
+difficulty with the volunteer officers," continued he, turning half to
+the crowd, "to understand regular military channels,--channels." As he
+continued stammering and stuttering, the crowd inside suspended the pipe
+to ejaculate assent, while the Captain, understanding red-tape to his
+sorrow, and too much disgusted to make further effort to understand the
+Captain, retraced his steps. Finding the Adjutant he told him of his
+lack of success, and together they repaired to the hospital tent to
+break the unwelcome news.
+
+At the time of his entry into the Hospital the Lieutenant was impressed
+with the belief that the illness would be his last, and he daily grew
+more solicitous as to the success of his application for a furlough.
+Another coughing fit had, during their absence, intervened, and as the
+two cautiously untied the flaps and entered the stifling atmosphere of
+the crowded tent, the Surgeon and a friend or two were bending anxiously
+about the cot. Their entry attracted the attention of the dying
+Lieutenant; for that condition his faint hurried breathing, interrupted
+by occasional gasps, and the rolling, fast glazing eye, too plainly
+denoted. A look of anxious inquiry,--a faint shake of the head from the
+Captain--for strong-voiced as he was, his tongue refused the duty of
+informing the dying man of what had become daily, unwelcome news.
+
+"Oh, my God! must I,--must I die without again seeing Mary and the
+babies!" with clasped hands he gasped, half rising, and casting at the
+same time an imploring look at the Surgeon.
+
+But the effort was too much. His head fell back upon the blankets. A
+gurgling sound was heard in his throat. With bowed heads to catch the
+latest whisper, his friends raised him up; and muttering indistinctly
+amid his efforts to hold the rapidly failing breath, "Mary and the
+babies. The babies,--Ma----" the Lieutenant left the Grand Army of the
+Potomac on an everlasting furlough.
+
+Mary was busily engaged with the duties of her little household a week
+later, enjoying, as best she might, the lively prattle of the boys, when
+there was the noise of a wagon at the door, and closely following it a
+knock. "Papa! papa!" exclaimed the children, as with eager haste they
+preceded the mother. With scarcely less eagerness, Mary opened the door.
+Merciful God! "Temper the wind to the shorn lambs." Earthly consolation
+is of little avail at a time like this. It was "Papa;"--but Mary was a
+widow, and the babies fatherless.
+
+By some unfortunate accident the telegram had been delayed, and the
+sight of the black pine coffin was Mary's first intimation of her loss.
+Her worst anticipations thus roughly realized, she sank at the door, a
+worthy subject for the kind offices of her neighbors.
+
+A fortnight passed, and the Adjutant was disturbed in his slumbers,
+almost at the solemn hour of midnight, to receive from an Orderly some
+papers from Division Head-Quarters. Among them, was the application of
+the Lieutenant, returned "approved."
+
+Measured by poor Mary's loss, how insignificant the sigh of the monied
+man over increased taxes! how beggarly the boast of patriotic
+investments! how contemptibly cruel, in her by no means unusual case,
+the workings of Red Tape!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Occurrences such as these, may sadden for the moment the soldier, but
+they produce no lasting depression.
+
+          "Don't you think I had oughter
+          Be a going down to Washington
+          To fight for Abraham's Daughter?"
+
+sang our ex-news-boy Birdy, on one of those cold damp evenings in early
+December, when the smoke of the fires hung like a pall over the camp
+ground, and the eyes suffered terribly if their owner made any attempt
+at standing erect.
+
+"And who is Abraham's Daughter?" queried one of a prostrate group around
+a camp fire.
+
+"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," continued Birdy, to another popular
+air, until he was joined by a manly swell of voices in the closing
+line--
+
+          "Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue!"
+
+"Not much life here," continued Birdy, seating himself. "I have just
+left the 2--th. There is a high old time over there. They have got the
+dead wood on old Pigey nice."
+
+"In what way?" inquired the crowd.
+
+"You know that long, slim fellow of Co. E, in that Regiment, who is
+always lounging about the Hospital, and never on duty."
+
+"What! The fellow that has been going along nearly double, with both
+hands over the pit of his stomach, for a week past?"
+
+"The same," resumed Birdy. "He has been going it on diarrhoea lately;
+before that he was running on rheumatism. Well, you know he has been
+figuring for a discharge ever since he heard the cannonading at the
+second Bull Run, but couldn't make it before yesterday."
+
+"How did he make it?" inquired several, earnestly.
+
+"Fished for it," quietly remarked Birdy.
+
+"Come, Birdy, this is too old a crowd for any jokes of yours. Whose
+canteen have you been sucking Commissary out of?" broke in one of his
+hearers.
+
+"Nary time; I'm honest, fellows. He fished for it, and I'll tell you
+how," resumed Birdy, adjusting the rubber blanket upon which he had
+seated himself.
+
+"You see old Pigey was riding along the path that winds around the hill
+to Corps Head-Quarters, when he spied this fellow, Long Tom, as they
+call him, sitting on a stump, and alongside of the big sink, that some
+of our mess helped to dig when on police duty last. Tom held in both
+hands a long pole, over the sink, with a twine string hanging from
+it--for all the world as if he was fishing. On came old Pigey; but Tom
+never budged.
+
+"'What are you doing there, sir?' said the General.
+
+"'Fishing,' said Tom, without turning his head.
+
+"'Fishing! h--l and d--n! Must be crazy; no fish there.'
+
+"'I've caught them in smaller streams than this,' drawled out Tom,
+turning at the same time his eyes upon the General, with a vacant stare.
+'But then I had better bait. The ground about here is too mean for good
+red worms. Just look,' and Tom lifted up an old sardine box, half full
+of grubs, for the General to look at.
+
+"'Crazy, by G--d, sir,' said the General, turning to his Aid, 'Demented!
+Demented! Might be a dangerous man in camp; must be attended to,'
+continued the General; striking, as he spoke, vigorous blows across his
+saddle-bow, with his gauntlet; Tom all the while waiting for a bite,
+with the patience of an old fisherman.
+
+"It was after three in the afternoon, and the General took the bait.
+
+"'Must be attended to. Dangerous man! dangerous man!' said he, adjusting
+his spectacles.
+
+"'Your name and Regiment, sir?'
+
+"Tom drawled them out, and the General directed his Aid to take them
+down.
+
+"'Go to your Quarters, sir,' said the General.
+
+"'Havn't caught anything yet, and hard tack is played out,' replied Tom.
+
+"At this the General put spurs to his horse, and left. Half an hour
+afterward, a Corporal's Guard came after Tom. They took him up to the
+marquee of the Surgeon of the Division. Tom played it just as well
+there, and yesterday his discharge came down, all O.K., and they've got
+the Commissary on the strength of it, and are having a high old time
+generally."
+
+"Bully boy with a glass eye! How are _you_, discharge!" and like slang
+exclamations broke rapidly and rapturously from the crowd.
+
+"But," said one of the more thoughtful of the crowd, as the condition of
+a brother then lying hopelessly ill, with no prospect of a
+discharge,--although it had been promised repeatedly for months
+past,--pressed itself upon his attention, "how shameful that this
+able-bodied coward and idler should get off in this way, when so many
+better men are dying by inches in the hospitals. A General who
+understood his command and had more knowledge of human nature, could not
+be deceived in that way."
+
+"Tom had lounged about Divisions Head-Quarters so much, that he knew old
+Pigey thoroughly, and just when to take him," said a comrade.
+
+"All the greater shame that our Generals can be taken off their guard at
+any time," retorted the other.
+
+"Oh, well," continued he, "about what might be expected of one educated
+exclusively as a Topographical Engineer, and having no acquaintance with
+active field service, and with no talent for command; for it is a talent
+that West Point may educate, but cannot create."
+
+"And what is a Tippo, Typo, or Toppographical Engineer, Sergeant?" broke
+in the little Irish Corporal, who chanced to be one of the group, rather
+seriously. "Isn't it something like a land surveyor; and be Jabers,
+wasn't the great Washington himself a land surveyor? Eh? Maybe that's
+the rayson these Tippos, Typos, or Toppographical Engineers ride such
+high horses."
+
+"Not badly thought of, Corporal," replied the Sergeant, amid laughter at
+Terence's discovery, and his attempt at pronunciation; "but Washington
+was a man of earnestness and ability, and not a guzzler of whiskey, and
+a mouther of indecent profanity. There are good officers in that Corps.
+There is Meade, the fighter of the noble Pennsylvania Reserves; Warren,
+a gentleman as well as a soldier. Others might be named. Meritorious
+men, but kept in the background while the place-men, cumberers of the
+service, refused by Jeff. Davis when making his selections from among
+our regular officers, as too cheap an article, are kept in position at
+such enormous sacrifices of men, money, and time. I have heard it said,
+upon good authority, that there is a nest of these old place-men in
+Washington, who keep their heads above water in the service, through the
+studied intimacy of their families with families of Members of the
+Cabinet--a toadyism that often elevates them to the depression of more
+meritorious men, and always at the expense of the country,--but--
+
+          'Dark shall be light.'
+
+Keep up your spirits, boys."
+
+"Keep up your spirits," echoed Birdy; "that is what they are doing all
+the time at Division Head-Quarters,--by pouring spirits down, Jim,"
+continued he, turning suddenly to a comrade, who lounged lazily
+alongside of him, holding, at the same time at the end of a stick, a tin
+cup with a wire handle, over the fire, "tell the crowd about that
+whisky barrel."
+
+Some of the crowd had heard the story, from the manner in which they
+welcomed the suggestion, and insisted upon its reproduction.
+
+"Can't, till I cook my coffee," retorted Jim, pointing to the black,
+greasy liquid in the cup, simmering slowly over the half-smothered fire.
+Jim's cup had evidently been upon duty but a short time previously as a
+soup-kettle. "But it is about done," said he, lifting it carefully off,
+"and I might as well tell it while it cools."
+
+"About one week ago I happened to be detailed as a Head-Quarter guard,
+and about four o'clock in the afternoon was pacing up and down the beat
+in front of the General's Head-Quarters. It was a pleasant sun-shiny
+spring day,--when gadflies like to try their wings, and the ground seems
+to smoke in all directions,--and the General sat back composedly in the
+corner of his tent on a camp stool, with his elbow on his knee and his
+head hanging rather heavily upon his hand. The flaps were tied aside to
+the fly-ropes. I had a fair view of him as I walked up and down, and I
+came to the conclusion from his looks that Pigey had either a good load
+on, or was in a brown study. While I was thinking about it up comes a
+fellow of the 2--th, that I used to meet often while we were upon
+picket. He is usually trim, tidy-looking, and is an intelligent fellow,
+but on that day everything about him appeared out of gear. His old grey
+slouch hat had only half a rim, and that hung over his eyes--hair
+uncombed, face unwashed, hands looking as if he had been scratching
+gravel with them, his blouse dirty and stuffed out above the belt,
+making him as full-breasted as a Hottentot woman, pantaloons greasy,
+torn, and unevenly suspended; and to foot up his appearance shoes
+innocent of blacking, and out at the toes. When I saw him, I laughed
+outright. He winked, and asked in an undertone if the General was in,
+stating at the same time that he was there in obedience to an order
+detailing one man for special duty at the General's Head Quarters, 'and
+you know,' said he, 'that the order always is for intelligent
+soldierly-looking men. Well, all our men that have been sent up of that
+stripe have been detained as orderlies, to keep his darkies in wood and
+water, and hold his horses, and we are getting tired of it. _I_ don't
+intend running any risk.'
+
+"'Don't think you will,' said I, laughing at his make-up.
+
+"Just then I noticed a movement of the General's head, and resumed the
+step. A moment after, the General's eye caught sight of the Detail. He
+eyed him a moment in a doubtful way, and then rubbing his eyes, as if to
+confirm the sight, and straightening up, shouted--
+
+"'Sergeant of the guard! Sergeant of the guard!'
+
+"The sergeant was forthcoming at something more than a double-quick; and
+with a salute, and 'Here, sir,' stood before the General.
+
+"Old Pigey's right hand extended slowly, pointing towards the Detail,
+who stood with his piece at a rest, wondering what was to come next.
+
+"'Take away that musket, sergeant! and that G--d d--n looking thing
+alongside of it. What is it, anyhow?' said the General, with a
+significant emphasis on the word 'thing.'
+
+"And off the sergeant went, followed by the man, who gave a sly look as
+he left."
+
+"Pretty well played," said one of the crowd; "but what has that to do
+with a whisky barrel?"
+
+"Hold on, and you will see; I am not through yet.
+
+"About half an hour afterward another man from the same regiment
+presented himself, and asked permission to cross my beat, saying that he
+had been detailed on special duty, and was to report to the General in
+person. This one looked trim enough to pass muster. He presented himself
+at the door of the tent and saluted; but the General had taken two or
+three plugs in the interim, and was slightly oblivious. Anxious to see
+some sport, I suggested that he should call the General.
+
+"'General,' said he, lowly, then louder, all the while saluting, until
+the General awoke with a start.
+
+"'Who the h--l are you, sir?'
+
+"'I was ordered to report to you in person, sir, for special duty.'
+
+"'Special duty, sir! Has it come to this? Must I assign the duty to be
+performed by each individual man, sir, in the Division, sir!'
+
+"The disheveled hair, flashing eyes, and fierce look of the General,
+startled this new Detail, and he commenced explaining. The General broke
+in abruptly, however, as if suddenly recollecting; and rubbing his
+hands, while his countenance assumed a bland smile:
+
+"'Oh, yes; you are right, sir, right; special duty, sir; yes, sir;
+follow me, sir.'
+
+"And the General arose and with somewhat uncertain strides left his
+marquee, and, followed by the man, entered a Sibley partly in its rear.
+
+"'There, sir,' said the General, pointing, with rather a pleased
+countenance; 'do you see that barrel, sir?'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' replied the Detail, saluting.
+
+"'That barrel holds whisky, sir--whisky;'--rising upon his toes and
+emphasizing the word; 'and I want you to guard it G--d d----d well.
+Don't let a d--n man have a drop, sir. Do you understand, sir?'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' rejoined the Detail, saluting, and commencing his beat
+around the barrel.
+
+"The General was about leaving the Sibley, when he turned suddenly;
+
+"'Do you drink, sir?'
+
+"'Once and a while, sir,' replied the Detail, saluting.
+
+"'Have you had any lately?'
+
+"'No, sir.'
+
+"'By G--d, sir, I'll give you some, sir;' and he strides into his
+marquee and returns with a tin cup full of liquor, which he placed upon
+the barrel, and told the man to help himself. After the General had
+gone, the Detail did help himself, until his musket lay on one side of
+the Sibley and himself on the other."
+
+"The General knows how to sympathize with a big dry," said one, as the
+crowd laughed over the story.
+
+Pen cannot do justice to the stories abounding in wit and humor
+wherewith soldiers relieve the tedium of the camp. To an old campaigner,
+their appearance in print must seem like a faded photograph, in the
+sight of one who has seen the living original. Characters sparkling with
+humor, such as was never attributed to any storied Joe Miller, abound in
+every camp. The brave Wolfe, previously to the victory which cost him
+his life, is reported to have sung, while floating down the St.
+Lawrence:
+
+          "Why, soldiers, why,
+          Should we be melancholy,
+          Whose business 'tis to die?"
+
+Whether induced in his case by an effort to bolster up the courage of
+his comrades or not, the sentiment has at all times been largely
+practised upon in the army of the Potomac.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+_The Battle of Fredericksburg--Screwing Courage up to the Sticking
+Point--Consolations of a Flask--Pigeon-hole Nervousness--Abandonment of
+Knapsacks--Incidents before, during, and after the Fight._
+
+
+In this wintry weather, striking tents meant stripping the log huts of
+the bits of canvas that ordinarily served as the shelter-tents of the
+soldiers. The long rows of huts thus dismantled,--soldiers at rest in
+ranks, with full knapsacks and haversacks,--groups of horses saddled and
+bridled, ready for the rider,--on one of these clear, cold December
+mornings, indicated that the army was again upon the move. Civilians had
+been sent back freighted with letters from those soon to see the serious
+struggle of the field; the sick had been gathered to hospitals nearer
+home; the musicians had reported to the surgeons, and the men were left,
+to the sharp notes of sixty rounds of ball cartridge carried in their
+boxes and knapsacks,--in the plight of the Massachusetts regiment that
+marched through the mobs of Baltimore, to the music of the
+cartridge-box, in the first April of the Rebellion.
+
+The time intervening between the removal of McClellan and the battle of
+Fredericksburg, was a period of uneasy suspense to the nation at large
+and its representatives in the field. Dear as the devoted patriotism,
+the earnest conduct of the Rhode Island Colonel--the hero of the
+Carolinas and now the leader of the Grand Army of the Potomac--were to
+the patriotic masses of the nation, the fact of his being an untried
+man, gave room for gloom and foreboding. With the army at large, the
+suspense was accompanied by no lack of confidence. The devotion of the
+Ninth Army Corps for its old commander appeared to have spread
+throughout the army; and his open, manly countenance, bald head, and
+unmistakable whiskers, were always greeted with rounds for "Burny." The
+jealousy of a few ambitious wearers of stars may have been ill concealed
+upon that morning, only to be disclosed shortly to his detriment; but
+the earnest citizen-soldiery were eager, under his guidance, to do
+battle for their country. Time has shown, how much of the misfortune of
+the subsequent week was attributable to imperfect weeding of
+McClellanism at Warrenton.
+
+Like a lion at bay, restless in easy view of the hosts of the
+Rebellious, the army had remained in its camp upon the heights of
+Stafford until the arrival of the pontoons. For miles along the
+Rappahannock, the picket of blue had his counterpart in the picket of
+grey upon the opposite shore. Unremitting labor upon fortifications and
+earthworks, had greatly increased the natural strength of the
+amphitheatre of hills in the rear of Fredericksburg. Countless surmises
+spread in the ranks as to the character and direction of the attack;
+though the whims of those who uttered them were variant as the
+reflections of a kaleidoscope. But the sun, that through the pines that
+morning, shone upon burnished barrels, polished breast-plates, and
+countenances of brave men, radiant, as if reflecting their holy
+purpose, has never, since the shining hosts of Heaven were marshalled
+for the suppression of the great prototype of this Rebellion, seen more
+earnest ranks, or a holier cause.
+
+The bugles call "Attention," then "Forward." Horses are rapidly mounted;
+and speedily coming to the shoulder, and facing to the right, the army
+is in motion by the flank towards the river. Far as the eye could see,
+in all directions, there were moving masses of troops. Cowardly beneath
+contempt is the craven, who in such a cause, and at such a time, would
+not feel inspirited by the firm tread of the martial columns.
+
+"Hear 'em! Oh, Hear 'em!" exclaimed an earnest-looking country boy,
+hastily closing a daguerreotype case, into which he had been intently
+gazing, and replacing it in his pocket, as the booming of a heavy siege
+gun upon the Washington Farm, followed instantly by the reports of
+several batteries to the right, broke upon the ear like volleyed
+thunder. A clap of thunder from a clear sky could not have startled him
+more, had he been at work upon his father's farm. His earnest simplicity
+afforded great amusement to his comrades, and for a while made him the
+butt of a New York Regiment that then chanced to be marching abreast.
+Raw recruit as he was, cowardice was no part of his nature, and he
+indignantly repelled the taunts of his comrades. Gloom deep settled was
+visible upon his countenance, however, although firm his step and
+compressed his lip.
+
+"Terence," said he, to the little Irish Corporal who marched by his
+side, as another suggestive artillery fire that appeared to move along
+the entire front, made itself heard, "may I ask a favor of you?"
+
+"Indade ye may, John, and a thousand ov them if ye plaze, to the last
+dhrop in my canteen."
+
+One of those jams so constant and annoying in the movements of large
+masses of men, here gave the opportunity for John to unbosom himself,
+which he did, while both leaned upon the muzzles of their pieces.
+
+"Terence, I do not believe that I will be alongside of you many days,"
+said John, with an effort.
+
+"Why, what's the matter wid ye, boy? if I didn't know ye iver since you
+thrashed that bully in the Zouaves, I wud think ye cowardly."
+
+"It is not fear, Corporal," continued John, more determinedly. "I'm
+looking the danger squarely in the face, and am ready to meet it, and I
+want to be prepared for it."
+
+"Be jabers, John," retorted Terence, "ye should have prepared for it
+before you left home. I saw Father Mahan just before I left, and he
+tould me to do my duty like a thrue Irishman; and that if I was kilt in
+such a cause I wud go straight through, and be hardly asked to stay over
+night in Purgatory. There's my poor brother, peace to his soul;--and did
+ye hear----"
+
+"But, Terence," interrupted John, "I am not afraid of death; and for the
+judgment after death I have made all the preparation I could in my poor
+way, and I can trust that to my Maker; but"----and here John clapped his
+hand over his left breast.
+
+"Oh, I see," said Terence. "It's a case of disease of the heart."
+
+"I want you, in case I fall, to take the daguerreotype that you will
+find in the inside pocket on the left side of my blouse, and a sealed
+letter, and see that both are sent to the address upon the letter,"
+continued John.
+
+"Faith, will I, John. But who tould you that you wud be kilt, and meself
+that's alone and friendless escape? Well, I'll take them, John, if I
+have to go meself; and it's Terence McCarty that will not see her
+suffer; and maybe--but it's hard seeing how a girl could take a fancy to
+a short curly-headed Irishman, like meself, after having loved a
+sthrapping, straight-haired man like you."
+
+How John relished the winding-up of the corporal's offer could not well
+be seen, as an order to resume the step interrupted the conversation.
+
+Progress was slow, necessarily, from the caution required in the
+approach to the river. Over the rolling ground, to an artillery
+accompaniment unequalled in grandeur, the troops trudged slowly along.
+Here and there was a countenance of serious determination, but the great
+mass were gay and reckless, as soldiers proverbially are, of the risks
+the future might hold in reserve.
+
+After a succession of short marches and halts, the forward movement
+appeared to cease about four o'clock in the afternoon, and the men
+quietly rested on their arms, as well as the damp, and in many places
+muddy ground would allow. Towards evening countless fires, fed by the
+dry bushes found in abundance upon the old fields of Virginia, showed
+that amidst war's alarms the men were not unmindful of coffee.
+
+Throughout the day, with but brief cessation, artillery firing had
+continued. The booming of the siege guns, mingled with the sharp rattle
+of the light, and the louder roar of the heavy batteries, all causing
+countless echoes among the neighboring hills, completed the carnival of
+sound.
+
+Night crept gradually on, the fires were extinguished, the cannonading
+slackened gradually, then ceased, and the vast army, save those whom
+duty kept awake, silently slept under frosted blankets.
+
+Cannonading was resumed at early dawn of the next day, and the slow
+progress of the troops towards the river continued. Before night our
+advance had crossed upon the pontoon bridges, notwithstanding a galling
+fire of the Rebel sharpshooters under cover of the buildings along the
+river, and was firmly established in the town. Late in the day our
+Division turned into a grove of young pines, a short distance in the
+rear of the Phillips House. Upon beds of the dead foliage, soft as
+carpets of velvet, after the fatigues of the day, slumber was sound.
+
+The reveille sounded at early morn of the next day,--Saturday, the
+memorable thirteenth of December,--by over three hundred pieces of
+artillery, again aroused the sleeping camps to arms, and in the grey
+fog, the groves and valleys for some miles along the river appeared
+alive with moving masses. As soon as the fog lifted sufficiently, a
+large balloon between us and the river arose, upon a tour of
+observation. It was a fine mark for a rifled battery of the Rebels, and
+some shells passed close to it, and exploded in dangerous proximity to
+our camp.
+
+Under an incessant artillery fire the main movement of the troops across
+the river commenced. Leaving our camp and passing to the right of the
+Phillips mansion, we found our Division, one of a number of columns
+moving in almost parallel lines to the river. On the western slope of
+the hill or ridge upon which the house stood, we came to another halt,
+until our turn to cross should come.
+
+Whatever modern armies may have lost in dazzling appearance, when
+contrasted with the armies of old that moved in glittering armor and
+under "banner, shield, and spear," they certainly have lost nothing in
+the enginery of death, and in the sights and sounds of the fight itself.
+A twelve-pound battery under stern old Cato's control, would have sent
+Cæsar and his legions howling from the gates of Rome, and have saved the
+dignity of her Senate. The shock of battle was then a medley of human
+voices, confused with the rattle of the spear upon the shield; now a
+hell of thunder volumed from successive batteries,--and relieved by
+screaming and bursting shell and rattling musketry. The proper use of a
+single shell would have cleared the plains of Marathon. More
+appropriately can we come down to later times, when
+
+          "The old Continentals,
+          In their ragged regimentals,
+          Faltered not,"
+
+for the ground upon which our army stood had repeatedly been used as a
+rallying point for troops, and a depot for military stores in
+Continental and Revolutionary times. How great the contrast between the
+armies now upon either side of the Rappahannock, and the numbers, arms,
+and equipage then raised with difficulty from the country at large. Our
+forefathers in some measure foresaw our greatness; but they did not
+foresee the magnitude of the sin of slavery, tolerated by them against
+their better judgment, and now crowding these banks with immense and
+hostile armies. Since that day the country has grown, and with it as
+part of its growth, the iniquity, but the purposes of the God of battles
+prevail nevertheless. The explosion that rends the rock and releases the
+toad confined and dormant for centuries, may not have been intended for
+that end by the unwitting miner, nor the civil convulsion that shatters
+a mighty nation to relieve an oppressed people and bestow upon it the
+blessings of civilization, may not have been started with that view by
+foul conspirators.
+
+But while we are digressing, a cavalcade of mounted men have left the
+area in front of the Phillips mansion, and are approaching us upon the
+road at a full gallop. The boys recognize the foremost figure, clad in a
+black pilot frock, his head covered with a regulation felt, the brim of
+which is over his eyes and the top rounded to its utmost capacity, and
+cheer upon cheer for "Burney" run along the column. With a firm seat, as
+his horse clears the railroad track and dashes through the small stream
+near by, he directs his course to the Lacy House on the bank of the
+river.
+
+It was near noon when we passed over the same ground, and taking a road
+to the right of the once tasteful grounds of that mansion, debouched by
+a narrow pass cut through the bank to the water's edge. As we did so,
+some shells thrown at the mounted officers of the Regiment passed close
+to their heads and exploded with a dull sound in the soft ground of the
+bank. With a steady tramp the troops crossed, scarcely the slightest
+motion being perceptible upon the firm double pontoon bridge. Another
+column was moving across upon the bridge below. Gaining the opposite
+bank, the column filed to the left, in what appeared to be a principal
+street of the town. Here knapsacks were unslung and piled in the store
+rooms upon either side.
+
+The few citizens who remained had sought protection from the shells in
+the cellars, and not an inhabitant of the place was to be seen.
+Notwithstanding the heavy concentrated artillery fire,--beyond some few
+buildings burned down,--nothing like the destruction was visible that
+would be imagined. Deserted by its proper inhabitants, the place had,
+however, a heavy population in the troops that crowded the streets
+parallel with the river. The day previous the Rebels had opened fire
+upon the town. It was continued at intervals, but with little effect.
+Z-i-i-s-s! a round shot sings above your head, and with a sharp thud
+strikes the second story of the brick house opposite, marking its
+passage by a tolerably neat hole through the wall. P-i-i-n-g! screams a
+shell, exploding in a room with noise sufficient to justify the total
+destruction of a block of buildings. The smoke clears away, ceilings may
+be torn, floors and windows shattered, but the building, to an outside
+observer, little damaged.
+
+From an early hour in the morning the musketry had been incessant,--now
+in volleys, and now of the sharp rattling nature that denotes severe
+skirmishing. On the left, where more open ground permitted extended
+offensive movements, the firing was particularly heavy. But above it all
+was the continuous roar of artillery, and the screaming and explosion of
+shells. To this music the troops in light order and ready for the fray,
+marched up a cross street, and in the shelter of the buildings of
+another street on the outer edge of the place and parallel with the
+river, stood at arms,--passing on their way out hundreds of wounded men
+of different regiments, on stretchers and on foot, some with ghastly
+wounds, and a few taking the advantage of the slightest scratch to pass
+from front to rear. Legs and arms carelessly heaped together alongside
+of one of the amputating tents in the rear of the Phillips House, and
+passed in the march of the day before, had prepared the nerves of the
+men somewhat for this most terrible ordeal for fresh troops. Many of the
+wounded men cheered lustily as the men marched by, and were loudly
+cheered in return, while here and there an occasional skulker would tell
+how his regiment was cut to pieces, and like Job's servant he alone
+left.
+
+From this point a fine view could be had of the encircling hills, with
+their crowning earthworks, commanding the narrow plateau in our
+immediate front. On the right and centre the Rebel line was not to be
+assailed, but by advancing over ground that could be swept by hundreds
+of pieces of artillery, while to protect an advancing column our
+batteries from their position must be powerless for good. A stone wall
+following somewhat the shape of the ridge ran along its base. Properly
+banked in its rear, it afforded an admirable protection for their
+troops. As there was no chance for success in storming these works, the
+object in making the attempt was doubtless to divert the Rebel attention
+from their right.
+
+Column after column of the flower of the army, had during the day
+charged successively in mad desperation upon that wall; but not to reach
+it. Living men could not stand before that heavy and direct musketry,
+and the deadly enfilading cannonade from batteries upon the right and
+left. The thickly strewn plain attested at once the heroic courage of
+the men, and the hopelessness of the contest.
+
+"Boys, we're in for it," said a Lieutenant on his way from the right.
+"Old Pigey has just had three staving swigs from his flask, and they are
+all getting ready. There goes 'Tommy Totten,'" as the bugle call for
+"forward" is familiarly called in the army.
+
+Our course was continued to the left--two regiments marching
+abreast--until we neared a main road leading westward from the town. In
+the meantime the movement had attracted the Rebel fire, and at the last
+cross street a poor fellow of the 2--th Regiment was almost cut in two
+by a shell which passed through the ranks of our Regiment and exploded
+upon the other side of the street, but without doing further damage. At
+the main road we filed to the right, and amid dashing Staff officers and
+orderlies, wounded men and fragments of regiments broken and
+disorganized, proceeded on our way to the front. There was a slight
+depression in the road, enough to save the troops, and shot and shell
+sang harmlessly above our heads. When the head of the column--really its
+rear--as we were left in front, was abreast of a swampy strip of meadow
+land, at the further end of which was a tannery, our Brigade filed again
+to the right. The occupation of this meadow appeared to be criminally
+purposeless, as our line of attack was upon the left of the road; while
+it was in full view and at the easy range of a few hundred yards from a
+three-gun Rebel battery. The men were ordered to lie down, which they
+did as best they could from the nature of the ground, while the mounted
+officers of the Division and Brigade gathered under the shelter of the
+brick tannery building.
+
+The movement was scarcely over, before one head and then another
+appeared peering through the embrasures of the earthwork, then a mounted
+officer upon a lively sorrel cantered as if for observation a short
+distance to the left of the work. Some sharpshooters in our front,
+protected slightly by the ground which rose gently towards the west,
+tried their breech-loaders upon him. At 450 yards there was certainty
+enough in the aim to make the music of their bullets unpleasant, and he
+again sought the cover of the work. An upright puff of smoke,--then a
+large volumed puff horizontally,--shrill music in its short flight,--a
+dull, heavy sound as the shell explodes in the soft earth under our
+ranks,--and one man thrown ten feet into the air, fell upon his back in
+the ranks behind him, while his two comrades on his left were killed
+outright, his Lieutenant near by mortally wounded, a leg of his comrade
+on the right cut in two, and a dozen in the neighborhood bespattered
+with the soft ground and severely contused. Shells that exploded in the
+air above us, or screamed over our heads; rifle balls that whizzed
+spitefully near, were now out of consideration. The motions of loading
+and firing, and as we were in the line of direction, the shell itself,
+could be seen with terrible distinctness. There was the dread certainty
+of death at every discharge. All eyes were turned toward the battery,
+and at each puff, the "bravest held his breath" until the smothered
+explosion announced that the danger was over. From our front ranks, who
+had gradually crept up the side of the hill, an incessant fire was kept
+up; but the pieces could be worked with but little exposure, and it was
+harmless. Fortunately the shells buried themselves deeply before
+exploding, and were mainly destructive in their direct passage. Again
+the horseman cantered gaily to his former place of observation on the
+left; but our sharpshooters had the range, and his fine sorrel was
+turned to the work limping very discreditably. This trifling injury was
+all that we could inflict in return for the large loss of life and limb.
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, poor John is gone!" said the little Irish Corporal,
+coming to the side of that officer.
+
+"What, killed?"
+
+"Ivery bit of it. I have just turned him over, and shure he is as dead
+as he was before he was born. That last shot murthered the boy. It is
+Terence McCarthy that will do his duty by him, and may be----"
+
+"Corporal! to your post," broke in the Lieutenant. "Old Pigey is taking
+another pull at the flask, and we will move in a minute."
+
+The surmise of the Lieutenant was correct. "Tommy Totten" again called
+the men to ranks, and right in front, the head of the column took the
+pike on another advance. The Rebels seeing the movement, handled their
+battery with great rapidity and dexterity, and shells in rapid
+succession were thrown into the closed ranks, but without creating
+confusion. Among others, a Major of the last Regiment upon the road, an
+old Mexican campaigner, and a most valuable officer, fell mortally
+wounded just as he was about leaving the field, and met the fate, that
+by one of those singular premonitions before noticed in this
+chapter,--so indicative by their frequency of a connexion in life
+between man's mortal and immortal part,--he had already anticipated.
+
+It was now about four o'clock in the afternoon. The day was somewhat
+misty, and at this time the field of battle was fast becoming shrouded
+by the commingled mist and smoke.
+
+On the left of the road the Brigade formed double line of battle along
+the base and side of a rather steep slope which led to the plateau
+above. The ground was muddy and well trodden, and littered with dead
+bodies in spots that marked the localities of exploded shells. Hungry
+and fatigued with the toil of the day, yet expectant of a conflict which
+must prove the death scene of many, the men sank upon their arms. From
+this same spot, successive lines of battle had charged during the day.
+Brave souls! With rushing memories of home and kindred and friends, they
+shrank not because the path of duty was one of danger.
+
+We were there as a forlorn hope for the final effort of the field. With
+great exertion and consummate skill upon the part of its Commander, a
+battery had been placed in position on the summit of the slope. Officers
+and men worked nobly, handling the pieces with coolness and rapidity.
+What they accomplished, could not be seen. What they suffered, was
+frightfully apparent. Man after man was shot away, until in some
+instances they were too weak-handed to keep the pieces from following
+their own recoil down the slope, confusing our ranks and bruising the
+men. Volunteers sprang forward to assist in working the guns. The
+gallant Commander, almost unaided, kept order in what would otherwise
+have been a mingled herd of confused men and frightened horses. No force
+could withstand the hurricane of hurtling shot and shell that swept the
+summit.
+
+"Lieutenant, take command of that gun," was the short, sharp, nervous
+utterance of a General of Division, as in one of his tours of random
+riding he suddenly stopped his horse in front of a boy of nineteen, a
+Lieutenant of infantry, who previously to bringing his squad of men into
+service, a few brief months before, had never seen a full battery.
+
+"Sir!" he replied, in unfeigned astonishment.
+
+"By G--d! sir, I command you as the Commanding General of this
+Division, sir, to take command of that piece of artillery."
+
+"General, I am entirely unacquainted with----"
+
+"Take command of that piece, sir. You should be ready to enter any arm
+of the service," replied the General, flourishing his sword in a
+threatening manner.
+
+"General, I will do my duty; but I can't sight a cannon, sir. I will
+hand cartridge, turn the screw, steady the wheel, or I'll ram----"
+
+"Ram--ram!"--echoed the General with an oath, and off he started on
+another of his mad rides.
+
+"Fall in," was passed rapidly along the line, and a moment after our
+Brigadier, cool as if exercising his command in the evolutions of a
+peaceful field, rode along the ranks.
+
+"Boys, you are ordered to take that stone wall, and must do it with the
+bayonet."
+
+Words full of deadly import to men who for long hours had been in full
+view of the impregnable works, and the field of blood in their front.
+Ominous as was the command, it was greeted with cheers; and with
+bayonets at a charge, up that difficult slope,--preserving their line as
+best they could while breaking to pass the guns, wounded and struggling
+horses, and bodies thickly strewn over that most perilous of positions
+for artillery,--the troops passed at a rapid step. The ground upon the
+summit had been laid out in small lots, as is customary in the suburbs
+of towns. Many of the partition fences were still remaining, with here
+and there gaps, or with upper rails lowered for the passage of troops.
+For a moment, while crossing these fallow fields, there was a lull in
+the direct musketry. The enfilading fire from batteries right and left
+still continued; the fierce fitful flashes of the bursting shells
+becoming more visible with the approach of night. Onward we went,
+picking our way among the fallen dead and wounded of Brigades who had
+preceded us in the fight, with feet fettered with mud, struggling to
+keep place in the line. Several regiments lying upon their arms were
+passed over in the charge.
+
+"Captain," said a mounted officer when we had just crossed a fence
+bounding what appeared to be an avenue of the town, "close up on the
+right." The Captain partly turned, to repeat the command to his men,
+when the bullets from a sudden flash of waving fire that for the instant
+lit up the summit of the stone wall for its entire length, prostrated
+him with a mortal wound, and dismounted his superior. Pity that his eye
+should close in what seemed to be the darkest hour of the cause dearest
+to his soul!
+
+Volley after volley of sheeted lead was poured into our ranks. We were
+in the proper position on the plain, and a day's full practice gave them
+exact range and terrible execution. In the increased darkness, the
+flashes of musketry alone were visible ahead, while to the right and
+left the gloom was lit up by the lurid flashing of their batteries. This
+very darkness, in concealing the danger, and the loss, doubtless did its
+share in permitting the men to cross the lines of dead that marked the
+halting-place of previous troops. Still onward they advanced,--the
+thunder of artillery above them,--the groans of the wounded rising from
+below;--frightful gaps are made in their ranks by exploding shells, and
+many a brave boy staggers and falls to rise no more, in that storm of
+spitefully whizzing lead.
+
+Regularity in ranks was simply impossible. Many officers and men
+gathered about a brick house on the right--a narrow lawn leading
+directly to the fatal wall was crowded; indeed, caps bearing the
+regimental numbers were found, as has since been ascertained, close by
+the wall, and a Lieutenant who was stunned in the fight and fell almost
+at its base, was taken prisoner. Nearly every officer who had entered
+the fight mounted, was at this time upon foot. In the tempest of bullets
+that everywhere prevailed the destruction of the force was but a
+question of brief time, and to prevent further heroic but vain
+sacrifices the order to retire was given. With the Brigade, the Regiment
+fell back, leaving one-third of its number in dead and wounded to hallow
+the remembrance of that fatal field.
+
+"This way, Pap! This is the way to get out safe," shouted a Captain as
+he rose, from the rear of a pile of rubbish, amid the laughter of the
+men now on their backward move. The burly form of the exhorting Colonel
+was seen to follow the no less burly form of the Captain, and father and
+son were spared for other fields.
+
+An effort was made to reform after the firing had slackened, but the
+increased darkness prevented the marshalling of the thinned ranks. Out
+of range of the still not infrequent bullets and occasional shell, and
+drowsy from fatigue, the men again lay upon their arms at the foot of
+the slope; and the battle of Fredericksburg was over.
+
+What happened upon the left, where the main battle should have been
+fought, and why Franklin was upon the left at all, are problems that
+perhaps the reader can pass upon to better advantage than the writer of
+these pages. His "corner of the fight" has been described, truthfully
+at least, whatever the other failings may be.
+
+We had left the field; but the Rebels had not as yet gained it. Pickets
+were thrown out to within eighty yards of their line, and details
+scattered over the field to bear off the wounded. No lights were
+allowed, and the least noise was sure to bring a shell or a shower of
+bullets. In consequence, their removal was attended with difficulty. The
+evil of the practice too prevalent among company commanders, of sending
+skulkers and worthless men in obedience to a detail for the ambulance
+corps, was now horribly apparent. Large numbers of the dead, and even
+the dying, were found with their pockets turned inside out, rifled of
+their contents by these harpies in uniform.
+
+But little rest was to be had that night. At 8 P. M. the troops were
+marched back into the town, only to be brought out again at midnight and
+re-formed in line of battle about a hundred yards distant from the wall.
+The moon had now risen, and in its misty light the upturned faces of the
+dead lost nothing of ghastliness. Horrible, too, beyond
+description--ringing in the ears of listeners for a lifetime--were the
+shrieks and groans of the wounded,--principally Rebel,--from a strip of
+neutral ground lying between the pickets of the two armies. Whatever the
+object of reforming line of battle may have been, it appears to have
+been abandoned, as after a short stay we were returned to the town and
+assigned quarters in the street in front of the Planters' House.
+
+Fredericksburg was a town of hospitals. All the churches and public
+buildings, very many private residences, and even the pavements in their
+respective fronts, were crowded with wounded. In one of the principal
+churches on a lower street, throned in a pulpit which served as a
+dispensary, and surrounded by surgical implements and appliances,
+flourished our little Dutch Doctor, never more completely in his
+element. Very nice operations, as he termed them, were abundant.
+
+"How long can I live?" inquired a fine-looking, florid-faced young man
+of two-and-twenty, with a shattered thigh, who had just been brought in
+and had learned from the Doctor that amputation could not save his life.
+
+"Shust fifteen minutes," was the reply, as the Doctor opened and closed
+his watch in a cold, business way.
+
+"Can I see a Chaplain?"
+
+"Shaplain! Shaplain! eh? Shust one tried to cross, and he fell tead on
+bridge. Not any follow him, I shure you. Too goot a chance to die, for
+Shaplains. What for you want him? Bray, eh?"
+
+The dying man, folding his hands upon his breast, nodded assent.
+
+"Ver well, I bray," and at the side of the stretcher the Doctor kneeled,
+and with fervid utterance, and in the solemn gutturals of the German,
+repeated the Lord's prayer. When he arose to resume his labor, the
+soldier was beyond the reach of earthly supplication; but a smile was
+upon his countenance.
+
+The Sabbath, with the main body of our troops, was a day of rest. Chance
+shots from Rebel sharpshooters, who had crept to within long range of
+the cross streets, were from time to time heard, and shell occasionally
+screamed over the town. To ears accustomed to the uproar of the
+preceding days, however, they were not in the least annoying. Over
+one-half of the army were comfortably housed, bringing into requisition
+for their convenience the belongings and surroundings of the abandoned
+dwellings. Notwithstanding our slow approach, the evidences of hasty
+exit on the part of the inhabitants were abundant on all sides.
+Warehouses filled with flour and tobacco were duly appreciated by the
+men, while parlors floored in Brussels, and elegantly ornamented, were
+in many instances wantonly destroyed.
+
+"Tom," said a non-commissioned officer, addressing a private whom we
+have before met in these pages, "where did you get that box?"
+
+"Get it? Why I confiscated it. Just look at the beauties," and opening a
+fine mahogany case, Tom disclosed a pair of highly finished duelling
+pistols.
+
+"What right have you to confiscate it?" retorted the Sergeant.
+
+"It is contraband of war, and Rebel property. Record evidence of that.
+Just look at this letter found with it," and Tom pulled out of an inside
+pocket of his blouse a letter written in a most miserable scrawl,
+assuring some "Dear Capting" of
+
+          "Here's my heart and here's my hand,
+          For the man who fit for Dixy land."
+
+Monday passed in much the same manner. About 9 P. M. of that day the
+Regiment, with others, was employed in throwing up breastworks, and
+digging rifle-pits on the west of the town. Expecting to hold it on the
+morrow against what they knew would be a terrible artillery fire, the
+men worked faithfully, and by midnight, works strong as the ground would
+admit of, were prepared. It was a perilous work; performed in the very
+face of the enemy's pickets;--but was only an extensive ruse, as at 1 A.
+M. we were quietly withdrawn and assigned a position in the left of the
+town. The sidewalks were muddy, and disengaging shutters from the
+windows, loose boards from fences,--anything to keep them above the
+mud,--the men composed themselves for slumber. Before 2 o'clock an
+excited Staff officer had the Brigade again in line, and after moving
+and halting until 4 A. M., we crossed the lower bridge in much lighter
+order than when we entered the place; for notwithstanding urgent
+solicitations of officers, from Brigadier down, permission was refused
+the men to obtain their knapsacks. Besides the loss of several thousand
+dollars to the Government in blankets and overcoats, hundreds of
+valuable knapsacks, and even money in considerable sums, were lost to
+the men. The matter is all the more disgraceful when we consider the
+abundance of time, and the fact, that details had been sent by the
+Colonels to arrange the knapsacks upon the sidewalk, in order that they
+could be taken up while the command would pass. It was marched by
+another route, however, and in the cold, pelting rain, the men, while
+marching up the opposite slopes of the Rappahannock, had ample reason to
+reflect upon the cold forethought that could crowd a Head-quarters'
+train, and deprive them of their proper allowance of clothing. Six hours
+later, our Division had the credit of furnishing about the only booty
+left by the army that the Rebels found upon their reöccupation of the
+town.
+
+Sadly and quietly, the troops retrod the familiar mud of their old camp
+grounds. The movement had been a failure--a costly one in private and
+national sacrifices,--and no one felt it more keenly than the
+broad-shouldered, independent, and much injured Burnside. Strange that
+this costly sacrifice should have been offered up on ground hallowed in
+our early struggle for freedom--that the bodies of our brave volunteers,
+stripped by traitor hands, should lie naked on the plain that bears a
+monument to that woman of many virtues, "Mary, the mother of
+Washington"--that ground familiar to the early boyhood of the Great
+Patriot, should have been the scene of one of the noblest, although
+unsuccessful, contests of the war. Fit altar for such a sacrifice! A
+shrine for all time of devout patriots, who will here renew their
+vows,--of fidelity to this God-given Government,--of eternal enmity to
+traitors,--and thus consecrate to posterity the heavy population we have
+left in the Valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+_The Sorrows of the Sutler--The Sutler's Tent--Generals
+manufactured by the Dailies--Fighting and Writing--A Glandered
+Horse--Courts-martial--Mania of a Pigeon-hole General on the
+Subject--Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel in Strait-Jackets._
+
+
+If the reader can imagine the contents of his nearest corner grocery
+thrown confusedly together under a canvas covering, he will have a
+tolerably correct idea of the interior of a Sutler's tent. Probably, to
+make the likeness more truthful, sardines, red herring, and cheese,
+should be more largely represented than is customary in a corner
+grocery.
+
+Our Sutler, although upon his first campaign, was no novice in the
+craft. He could be hail-fellow-well-met with the roughest of crowds
+thronging the outside of his rude counter, and at the same time keep an
+eye upon the cash drawer. And he was behind no one in "casting his bread
+upon the waters," in the shape of trifling presents and hospitable
+welcomes, in order that it might return at the next pay-day.
+Notwithstanding all his tact, however, Tom Green was in many respects an
+awkward, haphazard fellow, continually in difficulty, although as
+continually fortunate in overcoming it. His troubles were known to the
+Regiment, as the Sutler's interests were individualized to a great
+extent, and while all might be amused, he was never beyond the pale of
+sympathy. During the long winter evenings, the barrels and boxes in his
+tent seated a jovial crowd of officers, who in games and with
+thrice-told stories, would while away what would otherwise be tedious
+hours. Not unfrequently was the Chaplain, who quartered close by,
+disturbed with a "sound of revelry by night," to have his good-humor
+restored in the morning by a can of pickled lobster or brandied
+cherries.
+
+On one of the merriest of the merry nights of the holidays, our Western
+Virginia Captain was the centre of a group of officers engaged in gazing
+intently upon a double page wood-cut, in one of the prominent
+illustrated weeklies, that at one time might have represented the
+storming of Fort Donelson, but then did duty by way of illustrating a
+"Gallant Charge at Fredericksburg."
+
+"There it is again," said the Captain. "Not one half of our Generals are
+made by honest efforts. Their fighting is nothing like the writing that
+is done for them. They don't rely so much upon their own genius as upon
+that of the reporter who rides with their Staffs. By George, if old
+Rosey in Western Virginia----"
+
+"Dry up on that, Captain," interrupted a brother officer. "Old Pigey is
+the hero of the day. He understands himself. Didn't you notice how
+concertedly all the dailies after the fight talked about the cool,
+courageous man of science; and just look at this how it backs it all up.
+Old Rosey, as you call him, never had half as many horses shot under him
+at one time. Just see them kicking and floundering about him, and the
+General away ahead on foot, between our fire and the Rebels, as cool as
+when he took the long pull at his flask in the hollow."
+
+"And half the men will testify that that was the only cool moment he saw
+during the whole fight."
+
+"No matter," continued the other, "he has the inside track of the
+reporters, and he is all right with all who 'smell the battle from
+afar.'"
+
+"Well, there's no denying old Pigey was brave, but he was as crazy as a
+boy with a bee in his breeches," said the Captain, holding up the
+caricature to the admiration of the crowded tent. "Our Division gets the
+credit of it at any rate. Bully for our Division!"
+
+"Not one word," breaks in the Poetical Lieutenant, "of Butterfield, with
+his cool, Napoleonic look, as he rode along our line preparatory to the
+charge; or of Fighting Old Joe, unwilling to give up the field; or of
+our difficulty in clambering up the slope, getting by the artillery,
+which made ranks confused, and so forth, but
+
+          'On we move, though to self-slaughter,
+          Regular as rolling water.'
+
+Never mind criticizing, boys. It will sound well at home. We did our
+duty, at any rate, if we did not do it exactly as represented in the
+picture. The reporter was not there to see for himself, and he must take
+somebody's word, and it is a feather in our cap that he has taken
+Pigey's."
+
+The conversation was at this stage interrupted by the sudden entry of
+the Adjutant, with a loud call for the Sutler. That individual,
+notwithstanding the unusual excitement of the night, had been singularly
+quiet. Rising from his buffalo in the corner, he approached the
+Adjutant with a countenance so full of apprehension and alarm as to
+elicit the inquiry from the crowd of "What's the matter with the
+Sutler?"
+
+"He hasn't felt well since I told him a few hours ago," said a
+Lieutenant, a lawyer by profession, "that Sutlers were liable to be
+court-martialed."
+
+"And he'll feel worse," adds the Adjutant, "when he hears this letter
+read."
+
+Amid urgent calls for the letter, the Adjutant mounted a box, and by the
+light of a dip held by the Captain, proceeded to read a letter signed by
+the Commanding General of the Division, and considerably blurred, which
+ran somewhat in this wise:
+
+     "COLONEL:--
+
+     "Is your Sutler sagacious?
+
+     "Has he ordinary honesty?
+
+     "Has he the foresight common among business men? Is he likely to be
+     imposed upon?"
+
+The letter was greeted with roars of laughter that were not diminished
+by the dismay of the Sutler. The Adjutant was forthwith requested by one
+of the crowd to suggest to the Colonel to reply--
+
+"That our Sutler was a sagacious animal. That he had the honesty
+ordinary among Sutlers. That if the General was disposed to deal with
+him, he would find out that he had the foresight common among business
+men, especially in the way of calculating his profits; and that as far
+as making change was concerned, he was not at all likely to be imposed
+upon."
+
+Loud calls were now made upon the Sutler for an explanation, and with
+look and tones that indicated that with him at least it was no laughing
+matter, he commenced--
+
+"On the forenoon of the day that we crossed into Fredericksburg----"
+
+"We crossed!" roared the Captain. "Well, that's cool for a man who
+suddenly recollected when that Quarter-Master was killed by a shell near
+the Lacy House, just before our brigade crossed, that he had business in
+Washington."
+
+"Well, then, that _you_ crossed," continued the Sutler, correcting
+himself hastily, to allow the crowd to make as little capital as
+possible out of his blunder, "the General sent for me, and said that he
+had been informed that I thought of going to Washington, and wanted to
+know whether I would take a horse with me;--pointing to one that was
+blanketed, and that one of his orderlies was leading. I looked upon it
+as an order to take the horse, and thought that I might as well put a
+good face on the matter. So I told him that I would take it with
+pleasure. Well, I mounted the horse, thinking that I might as well ride,
+and took the road for Aquia. But I found out after half an hour's
+travel, that the horse was very weak,--in fact hardly able to bear me,
+and so I took the halter strap in hand and trudged along by his side.
+Presently I noticed a very bad smell. Carrion is so common here along
+the road that I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but the smell
+continued, and got worse, and I thought it strange that the carrion
+should keep with me. By and by I noticed his nostrils, and then found
+out to my rage that I, a Regimental Sutler, accustomed to drive good
+nags, was leading a glandered horse in a country where horse flesh was
+cheap as dirt. Well, at Aquia we had a great time getting the horse on
+the boat,--indeed, he fell off the gangway, and we had to fish him out
+of the water. The passengers crowded me, with the horse, into a little
+corner in the stern of the boat, and looked at me as if I deserved
+lynching for bringing him on board. But that was nothing to the trouble
+I had with him in Washington. After the boat landed, I led that horse
+around from one stable to another in Washington for four mortal hours,
+but couldn't get him in anywhere; and besides they threatened to
+prosecute me if I did not have him shot. Finding that I could do nothing
+else, I gave a man three dollars to have him taken away and shot. The
+thing bothered me mightily. I did not want to write to old Pigey, for
+fear that he might take some course to prevent me from collecting the
+greenbacks due me in the Regiment, and I did not like to tell him in
+person. Well, I have been putting it off and off for nearly a week past
+since my return--my mind made up to tell him all about it, but delaying
+as long as possible, until this afternoon he happened to see me, and in
+about half an hour afterward sent for me. It was after three o'clock, an
+unsafe time with the General, and I expected there would be the d----l
+to pay. From the way in which he asked me to be seated, shook hands with
+me, and went on inquiring about my stock and business, and so forth, I
+saw at once that he knew nothing of it. All the while I was fairly
+trembling in my boots. At last says he:
+
+"'Well, how did you leave the horse?' and without waiting for an answer,
+went on to say that he was a favorite animal, highly recommended by the
+Ohio Captain he had purchased him from, and wound up by repeating the
+inquiry.
+
+"There was no chance to back out now, and gathering my breath for the
+effort, said I--
+
+"'General, I regret to say, that your horse is dead.'
+
+"'Dead! did you say?' echoed the General, rising.
+
+"'Yes, sir; I was compelled to have him shot.'
+
+"'Shot! did you say, sir?' advancing; 'shot! compelled to have him shot,
+sir! By G--d, sir, I would like to know, sir, who would _compel_ you to
+have a horse of mine shot, sir.'
+
+"'He was glandered,' said I timidly.
+
+"'Sir! sir!! sir!!! d----d lie, sir,--mouth as sweet as sugar. D----d
+lie, sir,' retorted the General.
+
+"The General was furiously mad, his eyes flashing, and all the while he
+took quick and long steps up and down his marquee.
+
+"I attempted an explanation, but he would listen to none; and kept on
+repeating 'glandered!' 'shot!' and scowling at times at me;--saying,
+too, 'By G--d, sir, this matter must be investigated.'
+
+"'General,' said I, at length, 'in justice to myself, I would like'----
+
+"'Justice to yourself!' shouted the General, looking at me as if he
+believed me mean enough to murder my grandmother. 'Who the h--l ever
+heard of a sutler being entitled to any justice?----you, sir, I'll teach
+you justice. Get out of my tent, sir.'
+
+"I thought it best not to wait for another opportunity to get away, and
+as I sloped I heard the General swearing at me until I had passed the
+Surgeon's tent. You see what makes the matter worse with the General is,
+that he has been told several times that the horse was unsound, but
+would not admit that as much of a horseman as he professed to be, had
+been taken in by the 'Buckeye Officer.'"
+
+The recital of the story appeared to have lightened the load upon the
+breast of the sutler, and he wound up somewhat humorously, by telling
+the crowd that there was another on the list to be court-martialed, and
+that they must give him all possible aid and comfort.
+
+"Be easy, sutler! there are too many ahead of you on that list,"
+observed an officer. "Your case can't be reached for some time yet. It
+is admitted on all sides that our material, officers and men, are as
+good as any in the army; and, for all that, although one of the smallest
+divisions, we have more courts-martial than any other division. Why,
+just look at it. A day or two before the battle of Fredericksburg,
+twenty-three officers were released from arrest. Thirteen of them,
+Lieutenants under charges for lying, as old Pigey termed it, when, in
+fact, it was nothing more than a simple misunderstanding of one of his
+night orders, such as any men might make. Poor fellows! over one-half of
+them are out of his power now; but I wouldn't wonder if the General
+would be presumptuous and malignant enough to respectfully refer their
+cases to the Chancery of Heaven, with endorsements to suit himself!"
+
+"Well, that brave Lieutenant," said the Captain, "who asked permission
+of the Colonel to charge with our regiment when himself and squad had
+become separated from his own, has been reinstated. You know that at the
+time old Pigey gave permission to the Colonels to send Volunteer
+Officers before the board for examination, the Lieutenant-Colonel of his
+regiment, instead of sending him a written order, as was customary,
+sought him out when engaged in conversation with some non-commissioned
+officers of his command, and in an insulting manner gave him a verbal
+order to report. They had some hot talk about it, and in the course of
+it the Lieutenant said that 'he'd be d----d if he came into the army to
+study tactics; he came to fight,' and on the strength of that, the
+General had him tried and dismissed. Our Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel
+sent up a statement to 'Burney,' giving a glowing account of his gallant
+conduct in the fight; and the General seeing how dead in earnest he was
+when he said he came to fight, restored him to his position."
+
+"I am very much afraid," said the Lieutenant, slowly, interrupted by
+frequent whiffs at a well-colored meerschaum, "that the Colonel and
+Lieutenant-Colonel will have difficulty to save themselves."
+
+"Save themselves!" echoed several, from different parts of the tent,
+their faces hardly visible through the increasing smoke. "Why, what's in
+the wind now?"
+
+"A good deal more than a great many of you think," continued the
+Adjutant. "I think I see the dawning of considerable difficulty. The
+Colonel, you recollect, was compelled to correct our Division-General in
+some of his commands, to prevent confusion; and the General, although
+clearly in the wrong, submitted with a bad grace; and then at the last
+review you all remember how a whiffet chanced to yelp at the heels of
+the Staff horses, and how the General--it was after three, you
+recollect, G--d d----d the puppy and its ancestry, particularly its
+mother, until his Staff tittered behind him, and the Regiments of his
+command, officers and men, particularly ours, fairly roared. And then,
+too, when General Burnside saluted the colors, and requested Pigey to
+ride along, how he started off with his Staff, leaving us all at a
+'Present Arms;' and how the quick eye of Old Joe saw the blunder; and
+how he called the General's attention to it, without effect, until
+'Burney' sharply yelled out, 'General, you had better bring your men to
+a shoulder, sir;' and then, how the General, amid increased tittering
+and laughter, rode back, and with a face like scarlet squeaked
+out--'Division! Shoulder arms!' Now I have heard that the General blames
+the Field Officers of our Regiment with a good deal of that laughter;
+and that and this Sutler matter will make him provide a pretext for
+another Court-martial at an early day."
+
+          "Double, double, toil and trouble,"
+
+said the poetical Lieutenant. "Why, the Adjutant talks as if he could
+see the witches over the pot; certainly--
+
+          'No lateness of life gives him mystical lore.'"
+
+"No, but--
+
+          'Coming events cast their shadows before.'"
+
+continued the Adjutant, finishing the couplet. "I do not know that any
+gift of prophecy is given unto me, but I will venture to predict that
+the pretext will be that very order,--outrageous and unreasonable as it
+is,--that our Brigadier not only flatly and positively refused to obey
+before he left, but told his command that it was unlawful and
+unreasonable, and should not be obeyed."
+
+"What! that dress-coat order," cried the Western Virginia Captain,
+springing to his feet; "compel a man who has two new blouses, and who
+belongs to a regiment that came out with blouses and never had
+dress-coats, to put a dress-coat in his knapsack besides, when his
+clothing account is almost exhausted, and the campaign only half
+through. Is that the order you mean? By George, you must think that old
+Pigey is only going to live and do business after three o'clock in the
+afternoon, if you think that he will insist upon that order. Our
+Brigadier did right to disobey it. Old Rosey would have put any officer
+in irons, who----"
+
+"But, Captain," resumed the Adjutant, "unfortunately we are not in
+Western Virginia, and not under old Rosey, as you call him, but in the
+Army of the Potomac, where Red Tape clogs progress more than Virginia
+mud ever did, and where position is attained, not so much by the merit
+of the officer, as by the hold he may be able to get upon the favoritism
+of the War Department."
+
+"Is it possible," continued the Captain, thrusting his hands into the
+lowest depths of his breeches pockets, and casting upon the Adjutant a
+half inquiring, half reflecting look, "that this Regiment, which the
+General himself admits is one of the best disciplined in his Division,
+and which has been one of the most harmonious and orderly, is to be
+imposed upon in this way by a whimsical superior officer, who, whatever
+his reputation for science may be, has shown himself over and over again
+to have no sense! I tell you, our men can't stand it. Just look at my
+own Company, for instance, nearly all married men, families dependent
+upon them for support, and now when they have each two lined blouses, as
+good as new, and their clothing account about square, they are to take
+seven dollars and a half of their hard earned pay--more than half a
+month's wages--and buy a coat that can be of no service, and that must
+be thrown away the first march. I do not believe that the Government
+designs that our Volunteer Regiments should be compelled to take both
+blouses and dress coats. The General had better enter into partnership
+with some shoddy contractor, if he intends giving orders of this kind.
+I tell you, the men will not take them."
+
+"Come, Captain, no 'murmuring or muttering' against the powers that be,"
+said the Adjutant. "The men will either take them, in case the order is
+made, or go to the Rip-raps. I am inclined to think that the Field
+Officers will not see the men imposed upon. And at the same time they
+will not bear the brunt of disobeying the order themselves, and not let
+the men run any risk. It is hard to tell," continued the Adjutant, in a
+measured tone, refilling his pipe as he spoke, "what it will result in;
+but Pigey is in power, and like all in authority, has his toadies about
+him, and you may make up your minds that he will not be sparing in his
+charges, or in the testimony to support them. Our Colonel and
+Lieut.-Colonel, I know, feel outraged at the bare idea of being
+subjected to such an order. They are both earnest men, have both made
+heavy sacrifices to enter the service, and have never failed in duty,
+although, like most volunteer officers of spirit, they are somewhat
+restiff under authority. The Colonel, being an old soldier, and
+thoroughly acquainted with his work, is especially restiff under the
+authority of an officer so poorly fitted for his position as our
+Division General. But our turn must come. Every Regiment in the Division
+has suffered from his Court-martialling and studied interference, and so
+far we have been fortunate enough to escape. And with the insight I now
+have, I believe the glandered horse and the little whiffet that yelped
+and disturbed the General's ideas of a proper Review, will prove to be
+at the bottom of the whole matter."
+
+"Tom," interrupted the Captain, "you will have to put your record in
+better shape."
+
+"How can I do it?" said the Sutler.
+
+"By sending Pigey a bill for the three dollars you paid to have the
+horse shot."
+
+The crowd boisterously applauded the proposition, and insisted upon its
+execution. Desultory conversation followed until "Taps" dispersed them
+to their quarters.
+
+Grumbling is claimed as a soldier's privilege, and the Sutler's tent
+being a lounging place when off duty, becomes a place of grumbling, much
+like the place of wailing that the Jews have on the outskirts of
+Jerusalem.
+
+A fortnight later saw the crowd in their old position, but with
+countenances in which it was difficult to say whether anxiety or anger
+predominated.
+
+"Fellows, it is terminating just as the Adjutant prophesied a short time
+ago in this very place," said a Captain slightly past the prime of life,
+but of vigorous build. "In trying to keep the men out of dress coats,
+the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel have got themselves into all manner
+of trouble, and there is no let-up with old Pigey. I saw them this
+morning both as cheerful as crickets, and determined to have the matter
+thoroughly investigated."
+
+"Did they intimate any opinion as to what we ought to do?" inquired the
+Adjutant.
+
+"Not a word. In that respect they say just as they did before they were
+placed in close confinement, that it is a case in which each man must
+act for himself. They are willing to shoulder the responsibility of
+their own acts, and were very indignant when they heard that Pigey had
+ordered the other Brigade under arms, and two pieces of artillery to be
+trained upon our camp, as if the whole Regiment was guilty of mutiny,
+when there was not at the same time a more quiet or orderly Regiment in
+camp."
+
+"They understand," remarked the Adjutant, "however, why that was done.
+The General must have something to justify this unusually harsh
+treatment. A charge of simple disobedience of orders would not do it, so
+he charges them with mutiny, and trumps up this apprehension and parade
+to appear consistent. The Lieutenant-Colonel anticipated it, I know. I
+heard him say, while under simple arrest, that he believed that after
+three o'clock they would be placed in close confinement, and on the
+strength of it some letters were sent by a civilian giving full details.
+Well, I am glad that they are in good spirits."
+
+"In the very best," replied the Captain, "although the General starts as
+if he intended giving them a tough through. The Sibley that they were
+turned into late last night, was put up over ground so wet that you
+couldn't make a track upon it without it would fill with water, and the
+Lieutenant-Colonel had to sleep upon this ground with a single blanket,
+as it was late when his servant Charlie came to the guard with his roll
+of blankets, and the General would not permit him to pass. In
+consequence he awoke this morning chilled, wet through, and with a fair
+start for a high fever. And then they are denied writing material,
+books, even a copy of the Regulations. The General relented
+sufficiently, to tell an aid to inform them, that they might correspond
+with their families if they would submit the correspondence first to
+inspection at Division Head-quarters; to which they replied--that 'the
+General might insult them, but could not compel them to humiliate their
+families.' No one is permitted to see them unless by special permission
+of the General."
+
+"And when I saw those three guards to-day pacing about that Sibley,"
+excitedly spoke the Virginia Captain, "I felt like mounting a
+cracker-box in camp and asking the men to follow me, and find out on
+what grounds, this puss-in-boots outraged in this way men more
+well-meaning and determined than himself in the suppression of this
+rebellion. But it will all come right. They are not to be crowded clear
+out of sight in a single day. One of my men told me that he was present
+on duty when that wharf-rat of an Adjutant, that the exhorting Colonel
+is trying to make an Adjutant-General of, came into the General's tent
+with the Lieutenant-Colonel, and he said that the General asked the
+Colonel whether he was still determined to disobey the lawful order of
+his superior officer, the Commanding General of the Division?
+
+"'The legality of the order is what I question,' said the Colonel. 'An
+order to be lawful should at least be reasonable. That order is
+unreasonable, unjust to the men, and I cannot conscientiously obey it.'
+
+"'This money for the coats does not come out of your pocket,' said the
+General, blandly. 'Why need you concern yourself about it?'
+
+"'It comes out of the pockets of my men, General,' said the Colonel,
+'and I consider it my duty to concern myself sufficiently to prevent
+imposition upon them.'
+
+"'Tut,' said the General. 'You wouldn't hear a Regular officer say
+that.'
+
+"'The greater shame for them,' said the Colonel. 'My men are my
+neighbors and friends. They look to me to protect their interests. As a
+general thing the Regulars are recruited from the purlieus of great
+cities, and are men of no character.'
+
+"'Colonel,' said the General, sternly, 'listen to this definition of
+'Mutiny,' and then, as you are a lawyer, think of your present
+position.'
+
+"The Colonel heard it read and replied that 'it had nothing whatever to
+do with the case, as there was no mutiny, nor even an approach to it.'
+Considering the time of day, the General, so far, had been unusually
+cool, but he could keep in no longer.
+
+"'Colonel,' said he, in a loud, angry tone, as he advanced towards him,
+'by G--d, sir, you are mutinous, sir!'
+
+"'General,' replied the Colonel, coolly, and looking him full in the
+eye, 'with all due deference to your superior rank, permit me to say,
+that if you say I am guilty of mutiny you overstep the bounds of truth.'
+
+"The Colonel's confident manner rather staggered the General, and he
+turned to the Adjutant, who has been his runner throughout this matter,
+and called upon him to substantiate his assertion; which he did.
+
+"With the remark that he would not dare to make such false assertions
+away from the General's head-quarters, the Colonel turned upon him
+indignantly, and the General called for the Provost Guard to conduct him
+to the Sibley. Now I tell you, fellows," continued the Captain, "the
+General will make nothing out of this matter."
+
+"He has his malice gratified by the present punishment he is subjecting
+them to, as if fearful that they might come unharmed from a
+Court-martial. But I don't believe that he will be able to get the
+Regiment into dress coats," remarked the Adjutant.
+
+The Adjutant was right. The Regiment did not get into dress coats;
+although its Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel slipped into strait-jackets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+_Dress Coats versus Blouses--Military Law--Bill the
+Cook--Courts-Martial--Important Decision in Military Law--'A Man with
+Two Blouses on' can be compelled to put a Dress Coat on top--A Colored
+French Cook and a Beefy-browed Judge-Advocate--The Mud March--No
+Pigeon-holing on a Whiskey Scent--Old Joe in Command--Dissolution of
+Partnership between the Dutch Doctor and Chaplain._
+
+
+Necessity knows no law. Military law springs from the necessity of the
+case, and may be said, therefore, to be equivalent to no law. However
+plausible the principles embodied in the compact periods of Benet and De
+Hart may appear, in actual practice they dwindle to little else than the
+will of the officer who details the court. General Officers, tried at
+easy intervals, before pains-taking courts, in large cities, may have
+opportunity for equal and exact justice; but Heaven help their inferiors
+who have their cases put through at lightning speed, before a court
+under marching orders, and expecting momentarily to move.
+
+The Act of Congress, with a wise prescience of the jealousies and
+bickerings always arising between Regulars and Volunteers, provides that
+Regulars shall be tried by Regular, and Volunteers by Volunteer
+Officers. In practice, the spirit of the law is evaded by the
+subterfuge, that a Regular Officer, temporarily in command of
+Volunteers, is _pro tempore_ a Volunteer Officer. In the Mexican War,
+where the number of Volunteer Officers was comparatively small, there
+may have been a necessity for this. With our present immense Volunteer
+force there can be none whatever; and the practice is the more
+inexcusable, when we consider the great amount of legal as well as
+military ability among the officers of this force. The gross injustice
+of this violation of the act, must be apparent to any one upon a
+moment's reflection. Officers, whose only offence may be their belonging
+to the Volunteer Service, are too frequently subjected to the tender
+mercy of a Board of Martinets;--men of long service and tried ability,
+degraded by the fiat of a court composed of officers as tender in
+intellect as in years, and whose only recommendation to be members of
+the court, is their recent transfer from lessons in gunnery and
+drills;--with patent leather knapsacks, to field or higher positions in
+the Volunteer Service. Thus, the officer whose earnestness in the cause
+and heavy sacrifice of family ties and business affairs, first raised
+the command,--who grew with its growth during months, perhaps years, of
+hard service,--saw through his untiring efforts the awkwardness of his
+men change gradually for the precision of the veteran,--not unfrequently
+by the snap judgment of men whose only service has been in Pay,
+Quarter-Master, Commissary Departments,--anywhere but in a Fighting
+Department,--finds himself dishonored, his service thrown aside for
+naught, and his worst enemy the misuse of the laws he had taken arms to
+vindicate.
+
+Not an officer or soldier but must recollect a case in point. Now, this
+mainly arises from the undue and unjust deference paid by the War
+Department to Regular Officers, and the curse that attends them and
+upholds them--Red Tape. _Undue and unjust deference._ Does not the
+history of the Army of the Potomac prove it? Its heroic fighting, but
+ill-starred generalship!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Halloo, Bill! what news from the Sibley?" shouted one of a group of
+officers who sat and lay upon the ground, cheerfully discussing hard
+tack and coffee in the camp of a grand picket reserve, near the
+Rappahannock. The man addressed would, in build, have made a good
+recruit for the armies of New Amsterdam in their warfare against the
+Swedes, so graphically described by Irving. Short and thickly set, with
+a face radiant as a brass kettle in a preserving season, trousers thrust
+in a pair of cast-away top boots, the legs of which fell in ungainly
+folds about his ankles, a greasy blouse, tucked in at the waist-band,
+and a cap ripped behind in the vain effort to accommodate it to a head
+of Websterian dimensions. With all his shortcomings, and they were
+legion, Bill's education, unfailing humor and kindness of heart made him
+a favorite at regimental Head-quarters, where he had long been employed
+as an attendant. When the sickness of the Lieutenant-Colonel grew
+serious in the Sibley, Bill took his post by the side of his blankets,
+and in well-meaning attention made up what he lacked in tenderness as a
+nurse.
+
+"Nothing new since the trial," drawled out Bill, seating himself
+meanwhile, and mopping with his coat sleeve the perspiration that stood
+in beads upon his forehead.
+
+"Since the trial!" echoed the officer. "Why, they have not had notice
+yet, and the General said he would give them ample opportunity for
+preparation for trial."
+
+"So he did," continued Bill. "They were put into the Sibley on Monday
+night, and on Thursday night following, about half-past ten, when it was
+raining in torrents, and storming so that the guards and myself could
+scarcely keep the old tent up, that sucker-mouthed Aid of old Pigey's
+popped his head inside the flaps and handed the Colonel and
+Lieut.-Colonel each a letter. Both letters went on to say, that their
+trial would take place the next day, at ten o'clock, at Pigey's
+Head-quarters, and that each letter contained a copy of the charges and
+specifications, and that, in the meanwhile, they could prepare for
+trial, provide counsel, and so forth. The best part of two sheets of
+large-sized letter paper was filled with the charges against each, all
+in Pigey's hand-writing.
+
+     "'Disrespectful language towards the General Commanding Division;'
+     'Conduct tending to Mutiny;' 'Disobedience of Orders;' and
+     'Violation of at least half a dozen different articles of war.'
+
+"The ink was green yet, as if it had all been done after three o'clock.
+The Lieutenant-Colonel, you know, told that wharf rat of an Adjutant
+before the General, that he would not dare to make such mis-statements
+away from Division Head-quarters. Well, on the strength of that, he had
+him charged with sending a challenge to fight a duel, and telling his
+superior officer that he lied. Lord! when I heard them read, I thought
+they ought to be thankful that one of the darkies about Division
+Head-quarters hadn't died in the meanwhile, or there would have been a
+charge of murder. It might just as well, at any rate, have been murder
+as mutiny, that we all know. Time for trial!--lots of time! Just the
+time to hunt a lawyer, consult law books, and drum up testimony."
+
+"Timed purposely, of course," broke in the officer, indignantly, "and
+the Court, no doubt, packed to suit. But," his face brightening, "there
+is an appeal to Father Abraham."
+
+"It is all very well to talk about Father Abraham," continued Bill, in
+the same drawling tone; "but if you have to hunt up Honest Old Abe
+through the regular military channels, as they say you have to, he'll
+seem about as far off as the first old Father Abraham did to that rich
+old Cockey that had a big dry on in a hot place."
+
+"Bill," said the officer, as he saw the crowd inclined to laugh at the
+remark, "this is by far too serious a matter to jest about. Here are two
+men of character and position, devoted to the cause body and soul,
+completely at the mercy of an officer whose conduct is a reproach to his
+command, and who is malicious alike in deeds and words."
+
+"Especially the latter," interrupted Bill, more hurriedly than before.
+"The Colonel says he was chief witness, and swore the charges right
+straight through, without wincing. The Judge Advocate, they said, was a
+right clever gentlemanly fellow, but ignorant of law, and completely at
+the disposal of the General. I saw him several times when I was passing
+backwards and forwards, and he looked to me as if the beef was a little
+too thick on the outside of his forehead, for the brains to be active
+inside. Still, the Colonels have no fault to find with him, except that
+between times he would talk about drinking to Little Mac, and brag about
+the prospect, as the papers seem to say, of Fitz John Porter's being
+cleared. But then most of the Court did as much at that as he did. He
+did his duty in the trial, I guess, as well as his knowledge and old
+Pigey's will would allow."
+
+"Well, Bill, give us some particulars of the trials, if you know them,"
+suggested an officer of a neighboring regiment--the party during the
+conversation being increased by additions of officers and privates.
+
+"I only know what I saw passing back and forth, and what I heard from
+the Colonels themselves. They wouldn't allow any one to go within three
+yards of the tent in which they held Court; but I'll give you what I
+have, although to do it I must go back a little:--Before it was light on
+the day of trial the Major posted off to our Corps Commander with an
+application for a continuance, on the ground of want of time for
+preparation. About daylight the General came out, rubbing his eyes,
+wanting to know who that early bird was?
+
+"'Playing Orderly, sir,' said he, as his eye lit upon the letter in the
+Major's hand. 'Fine occupation for a man of six feet two, with a Major's
+straps upon his shoulders.'
+
+"The Major wilted till he felt about two feet six, but mustered presence
+of mind sufficient to tell the General his errand, and how his personal
+solicitude had prompted him to perform it himself. The General heard him
+kindly; stated that he had no doubt but that the Court would act
+favorably upon the application, and that it should be referred to them.
+The Court, when it met, acted favorably, so far as to give the Colonel,
+who was tried first, fifteen minutes to hunt a lawyer. But they wouldn't
+let the Lieut.-Colonel act, as he was a party, and several others were
+excluded on the ground of being witnesses, although they took good care
+not to call them. Both pleaded guilty to the 'simple disobedience of
+orders,' and the Court was ashamed to try them upon anything besides but
+the 'disrespectful conduct;' in regard to which old Pigey's assertions
+were taken, instead of the circumstances being proved. The Colonel was
+too indignant at the treatment to set up any defence, but the
+Lieutenant-Colonel cross-examined old Pigey until his testimony looked
+like a box of fish-bait. The General swore that he had given him 'the
+lie,' but upon being questioned by the Colonel, stated that 'he did not
+believe the Colonel intended to call his personal veracity into
+question.' In the same manner he had to explain away that duelling
+charge. At last he got so confused that he would ram wood into the stove
+to gain time, bite the ends of his moustache, play with the rim of his
+hat, and when cornered as to the Lieutenant-Colonel's character as an
+officer, to relieve himself, stated;--that he must say that the Colonel
+had hitherto obeyed every order with cheerfulness, promptitude, great
+zeal and intelligence, and that his intercourse with the Commanding
+General had been marked by great courtesy at all times."
+
+"The Colonel also stated further, that he had testimony to contradict
+that Adjutant, or Wharf-Rat, as you know him best by. He had told me
+before the trial to tell that young law student, Tom, a private of Co.
+C, who heard the conversation that the Adjutant had testified to, to be
+within calling distance during the trial, with his belt on, hair combed,
+and looking as neat as possible. Well, in Tom came, his face and eyes
+swelled up from a bad cold, a stocking that had been a stranger to soap
+and water for one long march at least, tied about his neck to cure a
+sore throat, his belt on properly, but his blouse pockets stuffed out
+beyond it with six months' correspondence, and his matted and bleached
+head of hair, through the vain effort to comb it, resembling the heads
+of Feejee Islanders, in Sunday-school books. A smile played around the
+lips of the gentlemanly old Massachusetts Colonel, who presided over the
+Court, as he surveyed him upon entering, and a titter ran around the
+Board, especially among some of the young West-Pointers. The Colonel's
+face colored, and the Judge Advocate's eyes glowed as if he had a soft
+block. But Tom was a singed cat; he always was a slovenly fellow, you
+know, and he turned out to be a file for the viper.
+
+"'Colonel,' said the Judge Advocate haughtily, 'have you any officers
+who are prepared to vouch for the character and credibility of this
+witness, as I see he is but a private?'
+
+"'Yes, sir, if the Court please,' retorted the Colonel
+indignantly,--then remembering how this same Judge Advocate had upon
+former occasions affected to despise privates, he added: 'His character
+and credibility are quite as good as those of half the shoulder-strapped
+gentry of the Corps.'
+
+"'Colonel,' said the President, blandly, 'there is an old rule requiring
+privates to be vouched for, rarely insisted upon, at this day, however,'
+casting, as he said this, a half reproachful look upon the Judge
+Advocate; 'but we desire you to understand that your word is as good as
+that of any officer before this Court.'
+
+"The Colonel vouched for him, and Tom was examined, and contradicted
+still further than his own cross-examination had done, the statement of
+the Adjutant, besides snubbing the Judge Advocate handsomely. A string
+of witnesses, from our Brigadier down to all the line officers of the
+command, was then offered to prove character, but the Court very
+formally told the Colonel that a superior officer, the Commanding
+General of the Division, had already testified to this, and that this
+rendered the testimony of officers inferior in rank quite superfluous.
+So you see from this and Tom's case, Justice don't go it blind in
+Courts-Martial, but keeps one eye open to see whether the witness has
+shoulder-straps on or not."
+
+"But, Bill," inquired a lawyer in the crowd, "did not the Colonel offer
+to prove that the Regiment was amply supplied with clothing, and that
+the order was unreasonable, and that it was not therefore a lawful
+order, as the law is supposed to be founded upon reason?"
+
+"Oh, yes, both did; but the Lieutenant-Colonel was told by the
+President, that if General Burnside were to order the President to make
+a requisition in dog-days for old Spartan metal helmets for his
+Regiment, he would make the requisition.
+
+"Said the Colonel, 'the President of the United States is by the
+Regulations empowered to prescribe the uniform.'
+
+"'That,' said the President, 'General Burnside must judge of. I must
+execute the order, however unreasonable it may seem, first, and question
+it afterwards.'
+
+"'Suppose the General would order you to black his boots; or,' said the
+Colonel, thinking that a little too strongly put; 'suppose that you were
+second in command of a battery lying near a peaceful and loyal town, and
+your superior, drunk or otherwise, would order you to shell it, would
+you obey the order, and question it after having murdered half the
+women and children of the place?' To which questions, however, the Court
+gave the go-by, remarking simply, that they did not suppose that the
+Colonel had any criminal intentions in disobeying the order. So, really,
+it is narrowed down to the disobedience of, to say the least, a most
+uncalled for order."
+
+"And faithful, well intentioned officers are, for what is at most but an
+honest blunder, treated like felons," said one.
+
+"From their lively and confident manner," said Bill, "I believe that
+they have assurances from Washington that all will be right. There is no
+telling how long the Lieutenant-Colonel will last under this
+confinement, however. He has failed greatly, and although so weak as to
+be unable to walk alone, the General insists upon the guards being upon
+either side whenever he has occasion to leave the tent. Even the sinks
+were dug at over one hundred yards distance from the Sibley. And the
+tent itself is located in such a manner that old Pigey can at all times
+have his vengeance gratified by a full view of it, the three guards
+about it, and my assisting the Lieutenant-Colonel from time to time. But
+the guards esteem, and we all esteem the officers inside the Sibley more
+than the General, who abuses his power in his marquee. Letters and
+newspapers come crawling under the canvas. Roast partridges, squirrels,
+apples, and delicacies that officers and men deny themselves of, find
+their way inside, and while my name is Bill Gladdon they shan't suffer
+through any lack upon my part, and I know that this is the opinion of
+all of us."
+
+"You all recollect the Sibley," said a Lieutenant, "that stands in the
+rear of old Pigey's marquee, in which he gave the collation after the
+last corps review, and welcomed our officers as he steadied himself at
+the table, with 'Here comes my gallant 210th.' The Court met in that."
+
+"Yes," resumed Bill, "the same. It stands near his cook tent, and while
+his darkies were serving up French cookery, the Judge Advocate did the
+work allotted him in endeavoring to justify by the trial, in some slight
+manner, the General's outrageous conduct. I heard that Tom said, that
+after the Judge Advocate had asked that he be vouched for, and the
+Colonel became indignant, the Judge Advocate said somewhat blandly,
+
+"'You must remember, Colonel, that this is not one of your ordinary
+Courts of Justice.'
+
+"'That it is not a Court of Justice,' retorted the Colonel, 'is very
+apparent.'
+
+"Both were put through in a hurry, at any rate. The different members of
+the Court said that they all had marching orders, and they had no sooner
+left the Sibley than they were upon horseback and on the gallop towards
+their different commands. Our Doctor had detailed an ambulance to take
+the Colonels in the rear of the Division. Old Pigey, in his usual
+morning survey of the premises, saw it in front of the Sibley, and sent
+an Orderly to take the rather lively, good-looking bays that were in it
+and exchange them for the old rips that haul the ambulance his cooks
+ride in. But we did not move then, although they say we will certainly
+to-morrow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That inevitable "they say," the common prefix to rumors in camp as well
+as civil life, had given Bill correct information. For next morning, in
+spite of the lowering sky, the camps were all astir with busy life, and
+during the course of the forenoon column after column trudged along over
+the already soft roads in a south-westerly direction. The movement was
+the mad desperation of a Commander of undaunted energy. A vain effort to
+appease that most capricious of masters, popular clamor. The rains
+descended, and that grand army of the Potomac literally floundered in
+the mud.
+
+In an old field, thickly grown with young pines, very near the farthest
+point reached in the march, our Regiment rested towards the close of the
+last day of the advance, or to speak more truly, attempted advance.
+Fatigued with the double duty of struggling with the mud and corduroying
+the roads, the repose was heartily welcome.
+
+          "It does a fellow good to feel a little frisky,"
+
+sang, or rather shouted, a little Corporal, whom we have met before in
+these pages, as he made ridiculous efforts to infuse life into heels
+clodded with mud.
+
+"Talk as you please about old Pigey, boys, he's a regular trump on the
+whiskey question. He'll cut red-tape any day on that. Don't you see the
+boys?" continued the Corporal, addressing a crowd reposing at full
+length upon the freshly cut pine boughs, conspicuous among whom was the
+Adjutant;--pointing as he spoke to several men in uniform, but boys in
+years, who were being forced and dragged along by successive groups of
+their comrades.
+
+"Couldn't stand the Commissary--stomachs too tender. Ha! ha! Pigey and
+myself are in on that."
+
+"What is up now, Corporal?" queried the Adjutant.
+
+"Nothing is up; it's all down," retorted the Corporal, in a half
+serious air, as he saluted the Colonel respectfully. "You see, Adjutant,
+they are bits of boys at any rate, just from school, and the Commissary
+was too much for their empty stomachs. I was sent back to hurry up the
+stragglers, and while we were catching up as rapidly as possible, old
+Pigey came ploughing up the mud alongside of us, followed by that
+sucker-mouthed Aid. I saw at once that Division Head-quarters had a good
+load on. With a patronizing grin, said the General stopping short
+alongside of a wagon belonging to another corps, and that was fast
+almost up to the wagon-bed, while the mules were fairly floating,
+'What's in that wagon?' and without waiting for answer, 'whiskey, by
+G--d,' he broke out, snuffing at the same time towards the wagon. 'Boys,
+unload a couple of barrels,' he continued, good-humoredly, as if trying
+to make up for the outrage he has just committed upon the Regiment. The
+driver protested, and the wagon guards said that it could not be taken
+without an order; but it was after three, and old Pigey ripped and swore
+that his order was as good as anybody's, and the guards were frightened
+enough to let our boys roll out two barrels. No pigeon-holing on a
+whiskey scent! One barrel he ordered up to his head-quarters, and the
+head of the other was knocked in, and he told us to drink our fill, and
+at it the boys went. Tin cups, canteens, cap-covers, anything that would
+hold the article, were made use of, and they are a blue old crowd, from
+the General down. The boys had had nothing but a few hard tack during
+the day, and it was about the first drink to some, and from the way it
+tastes it must have been made out of rotten corn and not two months old,
+and altogether straggling increased considerably."
+
+"Straggling! why they are wallowing like hogs in the mud, Adjutant! It
+is a shame, and if some one of my superiors will not prefer charges
+against the General and his Adjutant, I will. Men of mine are drunk that
+I never knew to taste a drop before," indignantly exclaimed the Western
+Virginia Captain, as, with hat off, face aglow with perspiration, eyes
+flashing, and boots that indicated service in taking the soundings of
+the mud on the march, he came panting up with rapid strides. "Now, sir,
+fourteen of my best men are drunk--the first drunken man I have had
+during the campaign--and I'll be shot to death with musketry, sooner
+than punish a single man of them."
+
+"But discipline must be kept up," said the Adjutant.
+
+"Discipline! do you say, Adjutant?" retorted the Captain. "If you want
+to see discipline go to Division Head-quarters. Why old Pigey is
+prancing around like a steed at a muster,--crazy! absolutely crazy! His
+cocked hat is more crooked than ever, and the knot of his muffler is at
+the back of his neck, and the ends flying like wings. Just a few minutes
+ago he stopped suddenly while on a canter, right by one of my men, lying
+along the road-side, that he had made drunk, and chuckled and laughed,
+and lolled from side to side in his saddle, and then at a canter again
+rode to another one and went through the same performance. And his
+Adjutant-General--why one of my men not ten minutes ago led his horse to
+Head-quarters. He was so drunk, actually, that his eyes looked like
+those of a shad out of water a day,--his feet out of the stirrups, the
+reins loose about his horse's neck, his hands hanging listlessly down,
+and the liquor oozing out of the corners of his sucker mouth. And there
+he was, his horse carrying him about at random among the stumps, and
+officers and men laughing at him, expecting to see him go over on the
+one side or the other every moment. Now, it is a burning shame. And I,
+for one, will expose them, if it takes the hide off. Here are our
+Colonels confined just for no offence at all,--for doing their duty, in
+fact,--and this man, after having Court-martialed all that he could of
+his command, trying to demoralize the rest by whiskey. Now, sir, the
+higher the rank the more severe the punishment should be. Just before we
+started Burney had an order read that we were about to meet the enemy,
+and that every man must do his duty. And here is a General of Division,
+in command of nine thousand men, as drunk as a fool."
+
+"Let Pigey alone on the whiskey question, Captain," interrupted the
+Corporal, who had in the meantime been refreshing his inner man by a
+pull at his canteen. "He's a regular trump--yes," slapping his canteen
+as he spoke, "a full hand of trumps any time on that topic. Like other
+men, he drinks to drown his grief at our poor prospect of a fight."
+
+"A fine condition he is in to lead men into a fight;--but not much worse
+than at Fredericksburg," slowly observed the Preacher Lieutenant, who,
+as one of the crowd, had been a listener to the story of the Captain.
+"Drunkenness has cursed our army too much. But we cannot consistently be
+silent in sight of conduct like this on the part of Commanders. The
+interests of our men"----
+
+"Have a care, Lieutenant," quietly observed the Adjutant, "how you talk.
+'The interests of the men' have placed our Colonels under guard in the
+Sibley."
+
+"Not bolts, nor bars a prison make," resumed the Preacher more
+spiritedly, "and I would sooner have a quiet conscience in confinement,
+than the reproach of disgraceful conduct and command a Division."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Corduroying the entire route had not been proposed, when the army
+commenced its movement; but it became apparent to all that progress was
+only tolerable with it, and without it, impossible. On the day after the
+above conversation, the army commenced to retrace its steps. Some days,
+however, intervened before the smoke ascended from their old huts, and
+the men in lazy circles about the camp fires rehashed their
+recollections of the "mud march."
+
+Like our repulse at Fredericksburg, it was, as far as our
+Commander-in-Chief was concerned, a misfortune and not a fault. A change
+in command was evident, however, and the substitution of the
+whole-hearted, dashing Hooker for the equally earnest but more steady
+Burnside, that took place in the latter part of January, occasioned no
+surprise in the army. The new Commander went much farther, than old
+attachments had probably permitted his predecessor in going, in removing
+McClellanism. Grand Divisions were abolished; rigid inquiries into the
+comforts and conveniences of the men were frequent, and senseless
+reviews less frequent. Bakeries were established in every Brigade, and
+fresh bread and hot rolls furnished in wholesome abundance, to the great
+benefit of the Government, for hospital rolls were thereby depleted, and
+reports for duty increased. Rigid discipline and daily drills too were
+kept up, as "Old Joe" was a frequent visitor, when least expected. His
+constant solicitude for the welfare of the men, manifested by close
+personal attention, which the men themselves were witness to, rather
+than by concocted newspaper reports, by which the friends of the soldier
+in their loyal homes might be imposed upon, and the soldier himself not
+benefited, endeared him to his entire command.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One clear, cold morning, during these palmy days of the army, the men of
+the regiment nearest the Surgeon's Quarters were greatly surprised by
+the sudden exit of a small-sized sheet iron stove from the tent occupied
+by the Surgeon and Chaplain, closely followed up by the little Dutch
+Doctor in his shirt sleeves, sputtering hurriedly--
+
+"Tam schmoke pox!" and at every ejaculation bestowing a vigorous kick.
+At a reasonably safe distance in his rear was the Chaplain, in half
+undress also, remonstrating as coolly as possible,--considering that the
+stove was his property. The Doctor did not refrain, however, until its
+badly battered fragments lay at intervals upon the ground.
+
+"Efry morn, and efry morn, schmoke shust as the Tuyfel. I no need
+prepare for next world py that tam shmoke pox. Eh?" continued the
+Doctor, facing the Chaplain.
+
+"Come, Doctor," said the Chaplain, soothingly, "we ought to get along
+better than this in our department."
+
+"Shaplain's department! Eh! By G--t! One Horse-Doctor and one Shaplain
+enough for a whole Division!"
+
+The sudden appearance of Bill, the attendant upon the Colonels in the
+Sibley, at the Adjutant's quarters, had the effect of transferring
+hither the crowd, who were enjoying what proved to be a final
+dissolution of partnership between the Chaplain and the Doctor.
+
+"I know your errand, Bill," remarked the Adjutant, looking him full in
+the face. "An orderly has just handed me the General Order. But what is
+to become of the Lieutenant-Colonel?"
+
+"You only have the order dismissing the Colonel, then. There was a
+message sent about ten o'clock last night, a little after the General
+Order was received at the Sibley, stating that at day-break this morning
+the Colonel should be escorted to Aquia under guard, and that before
+leaving he should have no intercourse whatever with any of his command.
+Old Pigey also tried further to add insult to injury, by stating that
+the Lieutenant-Colonel, who cannot, from weakness, walk twenty steps,
+even though it would save his life, would be released from close
+confinement, and might have the benefit of Brigade limits in our new
+camp ground for exercise. You know that is so full of stumps and
+undergrowth that a well man can hardly get along in it."
+
+"So an officer of the Colonel's merit and services," remarked the
+Adjutant, "was dragged off before daylight, and disgraced for what was
+in its very worst light but a simple blunder, made under the most
+extenuating of circumstances. Boys, if there be faith in Stanton's
+pledged word, matters will be set right as soon as the record of the
+case reaches the War Department. I am informed that he denounced the
+whole proceeding as an outrage, and telegraphed the General; and we all
+know that the General has been spending a good portion of the time since
+the trial in Washington."
+
+"And he came back," observed Bill, "yesterday morning, in a mood unusual
+with him before three o'clock in the afternoon. He had his whole staff,
+all his orderlies and the Provost Guard out to stop a Maine Regiment
+from walking by the side of the road, when the mud was over shoe top in
+the road itself,--and he flourished that thin sword of his, and raved
+and swore and danced about until one of the Maine boys wanted to know
+who 'that little old Cockey was with a ramrod in his hand,--' and that
+set the laugh so much against him that his Aids returned their pistols
+and he his sword, and he sneaked back to his marquee, and issued an
+order requiring his whole command to stand at arms along the road side
+upon the approach of troops from either direction."
+
+"Which," remarked the Adjutant, "if obeyed, would keep them under arms
+well nigh all the time, and would provoke a collision, as it would be an
+insult to the troops of other commands, to whom the road should be
+equally free. But it is a fair sample of the judgment of Pigey."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+_The Presentation Mania--The Western Virginia Captain in the War
+Department--Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton--Capture of the Dutch
+Doctor--A Genuine Newspaper Sell._
+
+
+Presentations by men to officers should be prevented by positive orders;
+not that the recipients are not usually meritorious, but the practice by
+its prevalency is an unjust tax upon a class little able to bear it. A
+costly sword must be presented to our Captain,--intimates a man perhaps
+warmly in the Captain's confidence. Forthwith the list is started, and
+with extra guard and fatigue duty before the eyes of the men, it makes a
+unanimous circuit of the command. Active newspaper reporters, from the
+sheer merit of the officer, may be, and may be from the additional
+inducement of a little compensation, give an account of the presentation
+in one of the dailies that fills the breasts of the officer's friends
+with pride, while the decreased remittance of the private may keep back
+some creature comfort from his wife and little ones. Statistics showing
+how far these presentations are spontaneous offerings, and to what
+extent results of wire-working at Head-quarters, would prove more
+curious than creditable.
+
+Our Brigade did not escape the Presentation Mania. Never did it develop
+itself in a command, however, more spontaneously. The plain, practical
+sense of our Brigadier was the more noticeable to the men, on account of
+its marked contrast to the quibbles and conceit of the General of
+Division. The officers and men of the Brigade had with great care and
+cost selected a noble horse of celebrated stock upon which to mount
+their Brigadier, and, on a pleasant evening in March, a crowd informally
+assembled was busied in arranging for the morrow the programme of
+presentation. The General of Division, so far in the cold in the matter,
+was just then making himself sensibly felt.
+
+"Colonel," said an officer, who from the direction of Brigade
+Head-quarters neared the crowd, addressing a central figure, "you might
+as well take the General's horse out to grass awhile."
+
+"Explain yourself," say several.
+
+"Pigey has his foot in the whole matter nicely. The General, you know,
+just returned this evening from sick leave. Well, he and his friends,
+who came with him to see the presentation ceremonies, had not been at
+Head-quarters an hour before that sucker-mouthed Aid made his
+appearance, and said that he was directed by the General Commanding the
+Division to place him under arrest. The fellow was drunk, and the
+General hardly deigned to notice him. As he staggered away, he muttered
+that there were fifteen charges against him, and that he would find the
+General's grip a tight one."
+
+Amid exclamations, indicating that the perplexity of the matter could
+not prevent a sly smile at the ludicrous position in which the Brigadier
+and his friends from abroad were placed, the officer continued--
+
+"But the General brings good news from Washington. The Colonel and
+Lieutenant-Colonel of the 210th return at an early day."
+
+"Yes, sir, that is so," broke in our Western Virginia Captain, who had
+just returned from enjoying one of the furloughs at that time so freely
+distributed. "At last the War Department, or rather Mr. Secretary
+Stanton, for all the balance of the department, as far as I could learn,
+thought the delay outrageous, fulfils its promise. After the
+Lieutenant-Colonel had been at home on a sick leave for some time, and
+we all thought the matter about dropped; what should I see one day but
+his name, with thirty-two others, in a daily, under the head of
+'Dismissals from the Army.' There it was, dismissed for doing his duty,
+and published right among the names of scoundrels who had skulked five
+times from the battle-field; men charged with drunkenness, and every
+offence known to the Military Decalogue. My furlough had just come, and
+I started for Washington by the next boat, bound to see how the matter
+stood. The morning after I got there, I posted up bright and early to
+the War Department, but a sergeant near the door, with more polish on
+his boots than in his manners, told me that I had better keep shady
+until ten o'clock, as business hours commenced then. I sat down on a
+pile of old lumber near by, and passed very nearly three hours in
+wondering why so many broad-shouldered fellows, who could make a sabre
+fall as heavy as the blow of a broad-axe, were lounging about or going
+backward and forward upon errands that sickly boys might do as well. As
+it grew nearer ten, able-bodied, bright-looking officers, Regulars, as I
+was told, educated at Uncle Sam's expense to fight, elegantly
+shoulder-strapped, passed in to drive quills in a quiet department,
+'remote from death's alarms,' and I wondered if some spirited clerks and
+schoolmasters that I knew, who would have been willing to have gone bent
+double under knapsacks, if the Surgeon would have accepted them, would
+not have performed the duty better, and have permitted the country to
+have the benefit of the military education of these gentlemen."
+
+"I see, Captain, that you don't understand it," interrupted an officer.
+"Our Regular Officers are not all alike patriotic up to the fighting
+point; and it is a charitable provision that permits one, say,--who is
+married to a plantation of niggers, or who has other Southern sympathies
+or affinities, or who may have conscientious scruples about fighting
+against our 'Southern brethren,'--to take a snug salary in some peaceful
+department, or to go on recruiting service in quiet towns, where
+grasshoppers can be heard singing for squares, and where he is under the
+necessity of killing nothing but time, and wounding nothing but his
+country's honor and his own, if a man of that description can be said to
+possess any. In their offices, these half-hearted Lieutenants, Captains,
+and Colonels, are like satraps in their halls, unapproachable, except by
+passing bayonets that should be turned towards Richmond."
+
+"Well, if I don't understand it," resumed the Captain, "it is high time
+that Uncle Sam understood it. If these men are half-hearted, they will
+write no better than they fight, and I guess if the truth could be got
+at, they are responsible for most of the clogging in the Commissary and
+Quarter-Master Departments. But you've got me off my story. At ten
+o'clock I staved in, just as I was, my uniform shabby, and my boots
+with a tolerably fair representation of Aquia mud upon them. Passing
+from one orderly to another, I brought up at the Adjutant-General's
+office, and there I was referred to the head clerk's office, and there a
+pleasant-looking, gentlemanly Major told me that the matter would be
+certainly set straight as soon as the court-martial records were
+forwarded; that they had telegraphed for them again and again; and that
+at one time they were reported lost, and at another carried off by one
+of General Burnside's Staff Officers. As I had heard of records of the
+kind being delayed before, I intimated rather plainly what I thought of
+the matter, and told him that I wanted to see the Secretary himself. He
+smiled, and told me to take my place in the rear of an odd-looking mixed
+assemblage of persons in the hall, who were crowding towards an open
+door. It was after two o'clock and after I had stood until I felt
+devotional about the knees, when my turn brought me before the door, and
+showed me Mr. Secretary himself, standing behind a desk, tossing his
+head, now on this side and now on that, with quick jerks, like a
+short-horned bull in fly time, despatching business and the hopes of the
+parties who had it from their looks, about the same time. Right manfully
+did he stand up to his work; better than to his word perhaps, if reports
+that I have heard be true."
+
+"A pretty-faced, middle-aged lady approached his desk, and I thought
+that I could see a rather awkward effort at a smile hang around the
+upper corners of his huge, black beard, as his eye caught her features
+through his spectacles, and he received her papers. But the gruff manner
+in which he told her the next moment that he would not grant it, showed
+I was mistaken.
+
+"'But I was told, Mr. Secretary,' said the woman, in tremulous tones,
+'that my papers were all right, and that your assent was a mere
+formality. I have three other sons in the service, and this boy is
+not'----
+
+"'I don't care what you have been told,' retorted the Secretary, in a
+manner that made me so far forget my reverence that my toes suddenly
+felt as if disposed to propel something that, strange to say, had the
+semblance of humanity, and was not distant at the time. 'You had better
+leave the room, madam!' continued the same voice, somewhat gruffer and
+sterner, as the poor woman burst into tears at the sudden
+disappointment. 'You only interrupt and annoy. We are accustomed to this
+sort of thing here.'
+
+"I looked at him as he took the papers of another for examination, and
+wondered whether we were really American citizens--sovereigns as our
+politicians tell us when on the stump, and whether he was really a
+public servant. But I couldn't see it.
+
+"Now, civility is a cheap commodity, and, in my humble opinion, the
+least that can be expected of men filling public positions is that they
+should possess it in an ordinary degree.
+
+"Three o'clock came, but it was not my turn yet. In fact, the treatment
+of the lady had so disgusted me, that I was quite ready to leave when a
+servant announced that business hours were over. That evening, I found
+out to my great satisfaction that men considerably more influential than
+myself had held the Secretary to the promises he had made them, and that
+notwithstanding all his backing and filling the order for their return
+would be issued."
+
+The disappointment of the morrow was a standing topic in camp and on the
+picket line for the ensuing three weeks. The only doubt that existed
+with the Court convened for the trial of the Brigadier appeared to be
+whether the numerous charges excelled most in frivolity or malice, as a
+slight reprimand for writing an unofficial account of an engagement,--an
+offence of which several members of the Court had, by their own
+confession, repeatedly been guilty,--was the sole result of its labor.
+His restoration to command, the presentation, and the return of the
+Colonels followed in rapid succession amid the rejoicings of officers
+and men.
+
+--Amid the waste of meadow and woodland that characterized the face of
+that country, the houses of the farmers, or rather, to use the
+grandiloquent language of the inhabitants, "the mansions of the
+planters," were objects of peculiar interest. In their quaint appearance
+and general air of dilapidation, they stood as relics of the
+civilization of another age. Centuries, seemingly, of important events
+in the law of progress are crowded into years of our campaigning. The
+social status of a large country semi-civilized--whether you regard the
+intelligence of its people or the condition of its society--is being
+suddenly altered. The war accomplishes what well-designing men lacked
+nerve and ability to execute--emancipation. The blessings of a purer
+civilization will follow as naturally as sunshine follows storm.
+
+And yet here and there these old buildings would be varied by one
+evidently framed upon a Yankee model. Such was what was widely known in
+the army as "the Moncure House." On a commanding site at the edge of a
+meadow several miles in length, and that seemed from the abrupt bluffs
+that bordered it to have been once the bottom of a lake, this two-story
+weather-board frame was readily discernible. Its location made it a
+prominent point, too, upon the picket line, and it was favored above its
+fellows by daily and nightly occupancy by officers of the command. At
+this period the Regiment almost lived upon the picket line. An old
+wench, with several chalky complexioned children, whose paternal
+ancestor was understood to be under a musket of English manufacture
+perhaps, somewhere on the south side of the Rappahannock, occupied the
+kitchen of the premises. She was unceasing in reminding her military
+co-lodgers that the room used by them as head-quarters,--from the window
+of which you could take in at a glance the fine expanse of valley,
+threaded by a sparkling tributary of the Potomac,--was massa's study,
+and that massa was a preacher and had written a "right smart" lot of
+sermons in that very place. In the eyes of Dinah the room was invested
+with a peculiar sanctity. Not so with its present occupants, who could
+not learn that the minister, who was a large slaveholder, had remembered
+"those in bonds as bound with them," and who were quite content that
+artillery proclaiming "liberty throughout the land" in tones of thunder
+had driven away this vender of the divinity of the institution of
+slavery.
+
+In this room, on seats rudely improvised, for its proper furniture had
+long since disappeared, some officers not on duty were passing a
+pleasant April afternoon, when their reveries of other days and rehashes
+of old camp yarns were interrupted by the sudden advent of an officer
+who a week previously had been detailed in charge of a number of men to
+form part of an outer picket station some distance up the river. His
+face indicated news, and he was at once the centre of attraction.
+
+"Colonel!" exclaimed he, without waiting to be questioned, "two of our
+best men have been taken prisoners, and the little Dutch Doctor----"
+
+"What has happened to him?" from several at once.
+
+"Was taken prisoner and released, but had his horse stolen."
+
+His hearers breathed freer when they heard of the personal safety of the
+Doctor, and the officer continued--
+
+"And the loss of our men and his horse has all happened through the
+carelessness,--to treat it mildly,--of the exhorting Colonel. He is in
+command of the station, and yesterday afternoon the Doctor was on duty
+at his head-quarters. In came one of the black-eyed beauties that live
+in a house near the ford, about half a mile from the station, boo-hooing
+at a terrible rate--that the youngest rebel of her family was dying with
+the croup--and that no doctor was near--and all that old story. The
+Colonel was fool enough to order the Doctor to mount his horse and go
+with the woman. Well, the Doctor had got near the house, when out sprang
+two Mississippi Riflemen from the pines on either side of the road and
+levelled their pieces at him. The Doctor had to dismount, and they sent
+him back on foot. Luckily the Colonel, who, as black Charley says, has
+been praying for a star for some time past, had borrowed the Doctor's
+dress sword on the pretence that it was lighter to carry, but on the
+ground, really, that it looked more Brigadier-like, or he would have
+lost that too. I was on duty down by the river hardly two hours after it
+happened, and as there is no firing now along the picket line the
+soldiers were free-and-easy on both sides. All at once I heard laughter
+on the other side, and looking over, I saw a short, thick-set Grey-back
+riding the stolen horse near the water's edge. Presently two other
+Grey-backs sprang on either side of the horse's head, and with pieces
+levelled, in tones loud enough for us to hear, demanded his surrender.
+
+"'Why, shentlemen Rebels, mein Gott, you no take non compatants, me
+surgeon,' said the Grey-back on the horse, in equally loud voice.
+
+"'No, d--n you! Dismount! We don't want you. You can be of more service
+to the Confederate cause where you are. But we must have the nag.'
+
+"'Mine private property,' he replied, as he dismounted.
+
+"'In a horn,' said one of the Grey-backs, pointing to the U. S. on the
+shoulder of the beast. 'That your private mark, eh?'
+
+"'You no shentlemen. By G--t, no honor,' retorted the Grey-back who
+personated the Doctor, as he swelled himself and strutted about on the
+sand in such a high style of indignation as to draw roars of laughter
+from both sides of the river.
+
+"That rather paid us with interest for the way we sold them the day
+before. You know they have been crazy after our dailies ever since the
+strict general order preventing the exchange of the daily papers between
+pickets. Well, that dare-devil of a law student, Tom, determined to have
+some fun with them. So when they again, as they often had before, came
+to the river with hands full of Richmond papers, proposing exchange, Tom
+flourished a paper also. That was the old signal, and forthwith a
+raw-boned Alabamian stripped and commenced wading toward a rock that
+jutted up in the middle of the river. Tom stripped also, and met him at
+the rock. Mum was the word between them, and each turned for his own
+shore, the Grey-back with Tom's paper, and Tom with several of the
+latest Richmond prints. A crowd of Rebel officers met their messenger at
+the water's edge and received the paper. The one who opened it, bent
+nearly double with laughter, and the rest rapidly followed as their eyes
+lit on the stars and stripes printed in glowing colors on the first page
+of the little religious paper that our Chaplains distribute so freely in
+camp, called 'The Christian Banner.' One old officer, apparently of
+higher rank than the rest, cursed it as he went up the bank as a 'd----d
+Yankee sell,--' which did not in the least lessen our enjoyment of Tom's
+success.
+
+"But with our two men and the Doctor's horse they have squared accounts
+with us since, and all through the fault of the Colonel."
+
+In response to inquiries as to how, when, and where, the officer
+continued--
+
+"There was a narrow strip of open land between a belt of woods and the
+river. The Colonel posted our two men on the inside of the woods, where
+they had no open view towards the enemy at all. That rainy night this
+week the Rebs came over in boats and gobbled them up. The Colonel
+attributed their loss to their own neglect, and next morning their place
+was supplied by four old soldiers, as he called them, from his own
+Regiment. That same day at noon, in broad daylight, they were taken."
+
+"And if he were not a firm friend at Division Head-quarters there would
+be a dismissal from the service for cause," said an officer of the
+crowd.
+
+"Our Corps Commander is too much of a soldier to let it go by," resumed
+the officer, "if our Brigadier can force it through Division
+Head-quarters, and bring it to his notice."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The order that introduced into the service the novelty of carrying eight
+days' rations on a march, had been discussed for some time in the
+Regiment. That night the Regiment was withdrawn from the picket line,
+and preparations were forthwith made for a practical illustration of the
+order on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+_The Army again on the Move--Pack Mules and Wagon Trains--A Negro
+Prophetess--The Wilderness--Hooped Skirts and Black Jack--The Five Days'
+Fight at Chancellorsville--Terrible Death of an Aged Slave--A
+Pigeon-hole General's "Power in Reserve."_
+
+
+It was some weeks after a Rebel Picket, opposite Falmouth, had surprised
+one of our own, who had not as yet heard of the change in the usual
+three days' provender for a march, by asking him across the river
+"whether his eight days' rations were mouldy yet?" that the army
+actually commenced its movement. While awaiting the word to fall in,
+this mass of humanity literally loaded with army bread and ammunition
+resembled, save in uniformity, those unfortunate beings burdened with
+bundles of woe, so strikingly portrayed in the Vision of Mirza. To the
+credit of the men, it must be stated, however, that the greatest
+good-humor prevailed in this effort to render the army self-sustaining
+in a country that could not sustain itself.
+
+Another novel feature in the movement was the long strings of pack
+mules, heavily freighted with ammunition, which were led in the rear of
+the different Brigades. Wagon trains were thereby dispensed with, and
+the mobility of the army greatly increased. Stringent orders were
+issued also as to the reduction of baggage, and dispensing with camp
+equipage and cooking utensils.
+
+In lively ranks, although each man was freighted with the prescribed
+eight days' provender and sixty rounds of ball cartridge, our Division,
+of almost 9,000 men, moved, followed by two ambulances to pick up those
+who might fall by the way, in the rear of which were five additional
+ambulances for the especial use of Division Head-quarters. For a General
+of whom reporters had said that "he was most at home in the field," the
+supply of ambulances, full of creature comforts, was unusually heavy. On
+we moved over the familiar ground of the Warrenton Pike, in common with
+several other Army Corps in a grand march; our Division, with its two
+ambulances; our General with his five,--and our proportionate number of
+pack horses and mules. The obstinacy of the latter animal was sorely
+punished by the apparent effort during that march to teach it perpetual
+motion. Halt the Division did statedly, but there was no rest for the
+poor mule. Experience had taught its driver that the beast would take
+advantage of the halt to lie down, and when once down no amount of
+tugging and swearing and clubbing could induce it to rise. Hence, while
+the command would enjoy their stated halts by the wayside, these strings
+of mules would be led or driven in continuous circles of steady toil.
+Despite the vigilance of their drivers, a mule would occasionally drop,
+and his companions speedily follow, to stand a siege of kicks, cuffs,
+and bayonet pricks, and to be reduced, or what would be more appropriate
+in their case, raised at length by the application of a mud plaster to
+the nostrils, which would bring the beast up in an effort to breathe
+freely; from which may arise the slang phrase of "bringing it up a
+snorting."
+
+Onward they marched, those wearers of the cross, the square, the circle,
+the crescent, the star, the lozenge, and the tripod; emblemed
+representatives of the interests of a common humanity in the triumphal
+march that the world is witness to, of the progress of Universal
+Emancipation. Landed aristocracies of the Old World may avow their
+affinity to the aristocracy of human flesh and blood that has so long
+cursed the New; but now that the suicidal hand of the latter has caused
+the forfeit of its existence, we are the centre of the hopes, fears, and
+prayers of the universal brotherhood of man in the effort to blot out
+for ever the only foul spot upon our national escutcheon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"De Lor bress ye. I know yez all. Yez, Uncle Samuel's children. Long
+looked for come at las," said an old wench on the second day of our
+march, enthusiastically to the advanced ranks of our Division, as they
+wound around the hill in sight of Mt. Holly Church, on the main road to
+Kelly's Ford, curtesying and gesturing all the while with her right
+hand, as if offering welcome, while with her left she steadied on her
+head the cast-away cover of a Dutch oven. A pair of half-worn army shoes
+covered her feet, and the folds of her tow gown were compressed about
+the waist, beneath a black leathern belt, the brass plate of which
+bearing the letters "U. S.," wore a conspicuous polish.
+
+"Massa over yonder," continued she, in response to a query from the
+ranks, pointing as she spoke across the river. "Hope you cotch him.
+Golly he'um slyer than a possum in a hen-roost."
+
+The anxiety of the wench for the capture of her master, and her
+statement of a pre-knowledge of the visit of the troops, were by no
+means exceptional. Rarely indeed, in the history of the Rebellion, has
+devotion on the part of the slave to the interest of the master been
+discovered. The vaunted fealty that would make his cause their own,
+lacks practical illustration. An attempt to arm them will save recruits
+and arms to Uncle Sam. Nat Turner's insurrection developed their strong
+faith in a day of freedom. Their wildest dreams of fancy could not have
+pictured a more auspicious prelude to the realization of that faith than
+the outbreak of the Rebellion. Well might
+
+          "Massa tink it day ob doom,
+          But we ob Jubilee."
+
+The face of the country at this point was adorned by the most beautiful
+variety of hill and dale. Compared with the region about Aquia, it had
+been but little touched by the ravages of war. When it shall have been
+wholly reclaimed under a banner, then to be emphatically "the Banner of
+the Free," an inviting door will open to enterprising business.
+
+A few miles further on we rested on our arms upon the summit of a ridge
+overlooking that portion of the Upper Rappahannock known as Kelly's
+Ford. The brilliant cavalry engagement of a few weeks previously, that
+occurred upon the level ground in full view above the Ford, invested it
+with peculiar interest. Who ever saw a dead cavalryman? was a question
+that had been for a long time uttered as a standing joke. Hooker's
+advent to command was attended by a sharp and stirring order that
+speedily brought this arm of the service to a proper sense of duty.
+Among the first fruits of the order was this creditable fight. While no
+excuse can be given for the slovenly and ungainly riding, rusty sabres,
+and dirty accoutrements, raw-boned and uncurried horses that had too
+often made many of our cavalry regiments appear like a body of Sancho
+Panzas thrown loosely together; it would still be exceedingly unfair to
+have required as much of them as of the educated horsemen and superior
+horseflesh that gave the Rebel cavalry their efficiency in the early
+stages of the war. Since then the scales have turned. Frequent
+successful raids and resistless charges have given the courage, skill,
+and dash of our Gregg, Buford, Kilpatrick, Grierson, and others that
+might be named, honorable mention at every loyal fireside.
+
+While on the top of this ridge, Rush's regiment of lancers, with lances
+in rest and pennons gaily fluttering beneath the spear heads, cantered
+past the regiment. Their strange equipment gave an oriental appearance
+to the columns moving toward the ford. With straining eyes we followed
+their movement up the river and junction with the cavalry then crossing
+at a ford above the pontoons. The Regiment had been almost continually
+broken up for detached service, at different head-quarters, or for the
+purpose of halting stragglers. With many of the men, their service
+appeared like their equipment, ornamental rather than useful, and in
+connexion with their foraging reputation, won for them the expressive
+designation of "Pig Stickers."
+
+Darkness was just setting in when our turn came upon the pontoon bridge,
+and it was quite dark when we prepared ourselves, in a pelting rain, for
+rest for the night, as we thought, in a meadow half a mile distant from
+the road. At midnight, in mud and rain, we resumed the march, in convoy
+of a pontoon train, and over a by-road which from the manner its
+primitive rock was revealed, must have been unused for years. The
+streams forded during that night of sleepless toil, the enjoined
+silence, broken only by the sloppy shuffle of shoes half filled with
+water, and the creaking wagons, the provoking halts that would tempt the
+eyes to a slumber that would be broken immediately by the resumption of
+the forward movement, have left ineffaceable memories. A somewhat
+pedantic order of "Accelerate the speed of your command, Colonel," given
+by our General of Division, as the head of the Regiment neared his
+presence towards morning, reminded us of the "long and rapid march" that
+the Commander-in-Chief intended the army to make.
+
+On the last day of April we crossed the Rapidan, fording its breast-deep
+current, considered too strong for the pontoons, and wondering,
+especially as the cannonading of the evening previous indicated
+resistance ahead, that our advance was not at this point impeded.
+Artillery planted upon the circling hills of the opposite shore would
+have made the passage, if even practicable, perilous to the last degree.
+As it was, however, _in puris naturalibus_, with cartridge-box on the
+musket barrel, and the musket on the shoulder, clothing in many
+instances bundled upon the head, the troops made the passage. The whys
+and the wherefores of no opposition--the confidence of Old Joe having
+stolen a march upon Johnny Reb--and the usual surmises of the
+morrow--increased in this instance by our having surprised and captured
+some Rebel pickets when just about halting, constituted ample capital
+for conversation during our night's rest in a pine grove two miles south
+of the ford.
+
+With the Army of the Potomac the merry month of May had a lively
+opening. After a march from early dawn, we found our Division, about the
+middle of the forenoon, massed in a thick wood in the rear of a large
+and imposing brick building, which, with one or two buildings of minor
+importance, constituted what was designated upon our pocket maps as the
+town of Chancellorsville. The region of country was most appropriately
+styled "The Wilderness." A wilderness indeed, of tall oaks, and a dense
+undergrowth known as "black-jack." There were but few open places or
+improved spots. In one of the largest of these, at a point where two
+prominent roads forked, stood the large building above mentioned. The
+day previous General Lee and his staff had been hospitably entertained
+within its walls. Now our fine-looking Commander and his gay and gallant
+staff were busily engaged in its lower rooms, while the ladies of the
+house of Secesh sympathies kept themselves closely in the upper
+story,--their curiosity tempting them however, to occasional peeps from
+half-opened shutters at the blue coats below.
+
+At twelve, precisely, just as we had taken a position in the open ground
+abreast of the house, the sharp report of a rifled piece, followed
+quickly by the fainter explosion of a shell, was heard upon our left.
+Another and another succeeded,--indicating that the wood was being
+shelled preparatory to an advance in that direction. Slowly we filed to
+the left, proceeding by a narrow winding wood-road until the head of our
+column had almost reached the river. A sudden order at this stage for
+the right about created considerable surprise, which ceased shortly
+after, as the sharp rattle of musketry, now as if picket firing, and now
+swelling into a volleyed roar, told us of a Rebel movement upon our
+flank. That our advance upon them in that direction had been quite
+unexpected, was apparent from their hastily abandoned camp grounds; rows
+of tents left standing, but slit from ridge-pole to pins; abandoned
+caissons and ammunition; and the tubs in which their rations of flour
+were kneaded, with undried dough in the corners. That they had rallied
+to regain their lost ground, was also apparent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What's the matter, Dinah?" shouted one of our boys to an active young
+wench, who was wending her way from the direction of the firing as
+rapidly as the frequent contact of an extensive hooped skirt with the
+undergrowth would allow.
+
+"Dunno zackly, massa! Don't like de racket at all down yonder," she
+replied, making at the same time vigorous efforts to release the hold
+some bushes appeared to have upon her, upon either side. A sudden roar
+of artillery, apparently nearer by, brought matters to a crisis, and
+screaming "Oh, Lor," she loosened her clothing, and sprang out of the
+skirt with a celerity that showed the perfection of muscular
+development, and won shouts of applause from the ranks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sharp engagement was in progress upon a lower and almost parallel
+road. The roar of cannon, the explosion of shells, the rattle of
+musketry,--now ragged as if from detached squads,--and now volleyed as
+from full ranks, mingled with the shrill cheers or rather demoniac yells
+of the Rebels, pealing their banner cry of "Hell," in their successive
+charges, and the gruff hoarse shouts of our troops, as they duly
+repulsed them, formed a most martial accompaniment to our march. The
+unity of sound of well executed volleys, told us how Sykes's Regulars
+attacked, whilst marching by the flank, halted at the word, faced to the
+left with the precision of an ordinary drill, and delivered their fire
+with murderous exactness.
+
+A few stray bullets flying in the direction of a temporized corral of
+pack-horses in a corner of the wood in the rear of the brick house,
+frightened their cowardly drivers, who commenced a stampede to the rear;
+and as we emerged from the road to our old position, the beasts were
+rapidly divesting themselves of their packs, in their progress through
+the undergrowth. In conjunction with this the frequent and fierce
+charges of the Rebel massed columns, favored by the smoke of the burning
+woods, made a panic imminent among the troops upon the lower road. The
+quick eye of old Joe saw the danger in a moment, and rushing from the
+house and springing upon his horse, he dashed down that road unattended,
+his manly form the mark of many a rebel rifle. Shouts of applause
+greeted him, and the continuous rattle of our musketry told us of the
+regained confidence of the men, and the renewed steadiness of our line.
+
+It was now four in the afternoon--the usual time with the Rebels for the
+execution of their favorite movement--charging in massed columns. On
+they came in their successive charges, howling like fiends, and with a
+courage that would have adorned an honorable cause. The steady musketry,
+but above all the terrific showers of canister from cannon that
+thundered in doublets from right to left along the line of our
+batteries, could not be withstood, and they fell back in confusion. The
+nature of the ground did not permit an advance of our forces, and we
+were compelled to rest content with their repulse. An hour later our
+Division moved by still another road to the left, to a ridge in the
+neighborhood of Banks's Ford. Upon its wooded summit, with no sound to
+break in upon us save the screaming of whip-poor-wills, which the boys
+with ready augury construed to mean "whip-'em-well," and picket firing,
+that would occasionally appear to run along the line, we passed a
+comfortable night.
+
+Breastworks were the order of the day following, and at noon we were
+enjoying our coffee in a cleared space, behind a ridge of logs and limbs
+that fronted our entire Division, and which we would have been content
+to hold against any attacking force. Cannonading continued at intervals,
+with occasional musketry firing. As it was considerably to our right, we
+were not disturbed in our enjoyment of supplies of provisions obtained
+from vacated Rebel houses in the neighborhood. Our amusement was greatly
+contributed to, by the sight of some of the men dressed in odd clothing
+of a by-gone fashionable age. But perhaps the most interesting object
+was a Text-book upon the Divinity of Slavery, written by a Reverend
+Doctor Smith, for the use of schools; its marked lessons and dirty
+dog-ears shewing that it had troubled the brains and thumbs of youthful
+Rebels. Instilled into infant minds, and preached from their pulpits, we
+need not wonder that they, with the heartless metaphysics of northern
+sympathy, should consider slavery "an incalculable blessing," and should
+now be in arms to vindicate their treason, its legitimate offspring.
+
+Cannonading had been frequent during the day; its heavy booming at times
+varied by the light rattle of the rifle. From four until eleven P. M. it
+was a continuous roar, save about an hour's intermission between five
+and six. At first sounding sullenly away to the right, then gradually
+nearing, until at nightfall musketry and artillery appeared to volley
+spitefully almost upon our Division limits. It was apparent that our
+line had been broken, and apprehending the worst we anxiously stood at
+arms and awaited the onward. Nearer and nearer the howling devils came;
+louder and louder grew the sounds of conflict. The fiercest of fights
+was raging evidently in the very centre of the ground chosen as our
+stronghold. If ever the Army of the Potomac was to be demoralized by the
+shock of battle, that was the time. But the feeling was not one of fear
+with our citizen soldiery--the noblest type of manhood--rather of
+eagerness for the troops in reserve to be called into the contest. Just
+before six we heard an honest shout, as the boys would call the cheers
+of their comrades. It grew fainter; the firing became more
+distant--slackened and ceased at six, to be resumed again at seven, upon
+another and more remote line of attack.
+
+The terrible distinctness of this alternate howling and cheering--as
+perceptible to the ear during the thunders of the fight, as the silver
+lining that not unfrequently fringes the heavily-charged cloud is to the
+eye,--is a striking illustration of the power of the human voice. We
+were to have another, however, and that of but a single voice, which
+from the agony of soul thrown into it, and its almost supernatural
+surroundings, must eternally echo in memory.
+
+About three hundred yards distant from the left of our Brigade line, in
+an open field, on elevated ground, stood a large and comfortable
+looking farm-house. In the morning it had been occupied; but as its
+inmates saw our skirmishers prostrating themselves on the one side in
+double lines that ran parallel to our breastworks, and the Rebel advance
+at the same time attain the edge of the wood upon the opposite
+side,--and the skirmishing that occasionally occurred along the lines
+giving promise of a fight that might centre upon their premises,--they
+packed up a few valuables and left for a place of safety. But not all.
+We read of noble Romans offering their lives in defence of faithful
+slaves. That species of self-sacrifice is a stranger to our Southern
+chivalry. In the garret of the building, upon some rags, lay an old
+woman, who had been crippled from injuries received by being scalded
+some months before, and had thus closed a term of faithful service which
+ran over fifty years, of the life of her present master and of that of
+his father before him. Worn out, and useless for further toil, she had
+been placed in the garret with other household rubbish. Her poor body
+crippled,--but a casket, nevertheless, of an immortal soul,--was not one
+of the valuables taken by the family upon their departure. As the
+thunders of the thickening fight broke in upon her loneliness, her cries
+upon the God of battles, alone powerful to save, could be heard with
+great distinctness. Isolated and under the fire of either line, there
+was no room for human relief. Her strength of voice appeared to grow
+with the increasing darkness, and above the continuous thunder of the
+cannon were the cries--"God Almighty, help me!" "Lord, save me!" "Have
+mercy on me!" shrieked and groaned in all the varied tones of mortal
+agony. Long after the firing had ceased, in fact until we moved at
+early dawn, our men behind the works and in the rifle pits in front
+could hear with greater or less distinctness, as if a death wail coming
+up from the carnage of the field, the piteous plaints of that
+terror-stricken soul. Rumor has it, that before the building was fired
+by a shell in the middle of the following forenoon, her spirit had taken
+its flight; but whether or not, it could not mitigate the retributive
+justice to be measured out by that God over us all to whom vengeance
+belongs, upon the heads of the ingrates who had left her to her fate.
+
+We moved, as we have before mentioned, at early dawn on one of those
+fair, bright Sabbath days so happily spoken of by "good old George
+Herbert;" marching by the right flank along our works, with a hurried
+step. It was between five and six when we neared the front,--passing on
+our way out, hosts of stragglers and disorganized regiments of the
+Eleventh Corps. They had suffered badly--some said, behaved badly--and
+some said, posted in such a way that they could not but behave badly.
+The merits of the case must remain for decisive history. Conceding
+equally good generalship to both, it is not amiss to say, that what
+happened under Howard might not have happened under Sigel. The desultory
+firing along our changed front showed too plainly the ground we had lost
+the day before. In the wood, alongside of the road fronting the right
+centre of our line, our Regiment lay at arms,--listening to awfully
+exaggerated stories from stragglers,--watching the posting of artillery
+in our immediate front, the entry of Brigades into the wood upon our
+left, and their exit under skilful artillery practice,--and now and then
+dodging at the sound of the stray shells sent as return compliments from
+Rebel batteries.
+
+"Good-bye, Colonel; these brass-bull pups will roar bloody murder at
+Johnny Reb to-day," said a fine-looking, whole-souled Lieutenant, in
+command of an Ohio battery, pointing to his pieces with pride, as he
+hurried by at a trot, to relieve a battery on our left centre.
+
+Poor fellow! How blind we are to futurity! His pieces were scarcely in
+position before a shell struck the caisson at which he was adjusting
+fuses, and his head, picked up at the distance of a hundred yards, was
+all that remained unshattered of his manly figure, after the explosion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Files of wounded upon foot, full ambulances, and stretchers laden with
+the more serious cases, passed us here.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I am done for, fellows," said a slightly built, pale-faced sergeant,
+resting upon his elbow, and pointing to his shattered side, as he was
+carried by on a stretcher; "but stick to the old flag; it is bound to
+win."
+
+His passage along the line was greeted with cheers, that must have
+sounded gratefully to ears fast closing to earthly sounds.
+
+But why individualize? The heroism that may be told of such a day, is
+but a drop compared with the thousand untold currents of unselfish
+patriotism and high resolve that well up in the bosoms of our Union
+soldiers. Not that daring deeds are not performed by Rebel ranks, but--
+
+          "True fortitude is seen in great exploits,
+          That justice warrants, and that wisdom guides;
+          All else is towering frenzy and distraction."
+
+About nine in the forenoon, to the sound of lively musketry on our left,
+our Brigade left in front, crossed the open space in front of the wood,
+and in the rear of a white plastered farm-house. A narrow wood-road led
+us into the wood, and filing to the left we connected with troops
+already in line of battle. The position was hardly taken before the zip!
+zip!! zip!!! of Minié balls informed us that we were objects of especial
+interest to Rebel sharpshooters. In another minute flashes of flame and
+puffs of smoke, that appeared to rise from among the dead foliage of the
+wood--so closely did their Butternut clothing resemble leaves--revealed
+a strong, well-formed, but prostrate Rebel line. The firing now became
+general upon both sides. Fortunately our position was such that they
+overshot us. Our men continued to aim low, and delivered an effective
+fire. Three times they tried to rise preparatory to the charge, and were
+as often thrown into confusion, and forced again upon the ground. For
+nearly two long hours the rattling of musketry was incessant. Finally,
+the Rebels made the discovery that the supply of ammunition was
+exhausted upon the right, and the right itself unsupported. It, of
+course, was the point to mass upon, and on they came in solid columns to
+the charge, completely outflanking our right.
+
+To hold the ground with our formation was simply impossible. The order
+to retire was given; and facing by the rear rank--the Regiments
+preserving their ranks as best they could in that thicket of black-jack,
+and carrying their wounded,--among them our Major, shot through the
+chest--made their way to the open space in rear of the wood. The colors
+of our regiment were seized,--but the first Rebel hand upon them relaxed
+from a death shot,--another was taken with the Regiment,--and the flag
+brought off in triumph. So completely had they gained our flank that
+our ranks became mixed with theirs, and nothing but the opportune fire
+of our batteries prevented their taking away a Field Officer, who twice
+escaped from their hands.
+
+As our Brigade re-formed in the rear of the batteries, treble charges of
+canister swept the woods of the Rebel ranks. We had suffered heavily,
+but nothing in comparison to the destruction now visited upon the
+Rebels. To complete the horrors of the day, the wood was suddenly fired,
+evidently to cover their retreat, and the fire swept to the open space,
+enveloping in flame and smoke the dead and wounded of both sides; and
+all this at the very time when throughout the length and breadth of this
+Christian land, thousands of churches were resonant with the words of
+the Gospel of Peace. But "Woe be unto those by whom offences come."
+"They have taken the sword, and must perish by the sword."
+
+So completely were the Rebels masters of the only available fighting
+ground that no further effort was made to advance our lines, and the
+army stood strictly upon the defensive. The open space, in which stood
+the Chancellorsville mansion, at this time a mass of smoking ruins, was
+in their possession. At arms behind the breastworks we awaited the
+onset; but although there was occasional firing, no general attack was
+made during the remainder of the day. With the thanks of our Corps
+Commander publicly given for services during the fight, our Brigade
+rested at night, speculating upon which side the heavy firing told then
+heard in the vicinity of Fredericksburg.
+
+During the next day we were stationed as a Reserve upon the right, and
+called to arms frequently during the day and night, when the Rebels
+with their unearthly yells would tempt our artillery by charging upon
+the works. On the day after we were moved to support the centre, and
+kept continually at arms. In the afternoon a violent thunderstorm
+raged--the dread artillery of Heaven teaching us humility by its
+striking contrast to the counterfeit thunder of our cannon. Rain
+generally follows heavy cannonading. All that afternoon and the greater
+part of the night it fell in torrents. Cannonading in the direction of
+Fredericksburg had ceased during the day. Sedgwick's disastrous movement
+was not generally known,--but our wounded had all been sent off;--our
+few wagon trains and our pack-horses had crossed,--and notwithstanding
+the show of fight kept up in front, enough was seen to indicate that the
+army was about to recross the Rappahannock.
+
+Favored by the darkness, battery after battery was quietly withdrawn,
+their respective Army Corps accompanying in Regiments of two abreast.
+
+The movement was in painful contrast to the spirited order that gave
+such a merry May-day to our hope upon the first of the month. In blouses
+that smoked that wet night around camp fires kept up for the purpose of
+misleading the enemy, our men stood discussing the orders, and the
+counter-orders, and what had happened, and what might happen, from the
+step. Hooker had credit for the successful execution of his part of the
+programme. What was wrong below was conjecture then, and does not yet
+appear to be certainly understood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Where is Old Pigey?" said one of a group of officers, suddenly turning
+to a comrade, as they stood about one of their camp fires. "He has not
+been near our Brigade during the day."
+
+"No! nor near the other, except to damn it in such a style as to draw
+down the rebuke of a superior officer," replied the man addressed.
+"Follow me, if you desire to see how a 'cool, courageous man of
+science,' one, whose face, as the Reporters say of him, 'indicates
+tremendous power in reserve,' meets this crisis."
+
+The two retired, and on a camp stool, with cloak wrapped closely about
+him, in front of a fire whose bright blaze gave him enormous proportions
+upon the dark background of pines, surrounded by his Staff, his hat more
+pinched up and askew than usual, and receiving frequent consolation from
+a long, black bottle, evidently his power in reserve upon this occasion,
+the General was discovered in a pensive mood.
+
+"Do you know," continued the officer, "that he reports, as a reason for
+his absence to-day, that he did not consider it prudent to be near our
+Brigade during the loading and firing exercise."
+
+"The torturing of a guilty conscience," was the reply. "Our men, as true
+soldiers, know but one enemy in the field."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At length, at two in the morning of the 6th of May, we cautiously
+commenced our movement to the river. The dawn of a rainy day saw us
+formed in line of battle, supporting artillery planted to protect the
+crossing. About eight our turn came upon the swollen stream. The rain
+pelted piteously as we ascended the steep slope of the opposite bank,
+and after a day's march over roads resembling rivers of mud, we slept
+away our sorrows under wet blankets, in the comfortable huts of our old
+camp ground.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+_The Pigeon-hole General and his Adjutant under Charges--The Exhorting
+Colonels Adieu to the Sunday Fight at Chancellorsville; Reasons
+thereof--Speech of the Dutch Doctor in Reply to a Peace-Offering from
+the Chaplain--The Irish Corporal stumping for Freedom--Black Charlie's
+Compliments to his Master--Western Virginia at the Head of a Black
+Regiment._
+
+
+                                   "HEAD-QUARTERS, ---- DIVISION.
+                                       "---- ARMY CORPS, _7th May, 1863_.
+
+                         "General Orders, No. 22.
+
+     "The term of service of six of the eight Regiments forming my
+     Division is about to expire. In the midst of the pressing duties of
+     an active Campaign there is but little time for leave-taking, yet I
+     cannot part from the brave officers and men of my command without
+     expressing to them the satisfaction and pride I have felt at their
+     conduct, from the time when I assumed command, as they marched
+     through Washington, in September last, to join the Army of the
+     Potomac, then about to meet the Enemy, up to the present eventful
+     period.
+
+     "The cheerfulness with which they have borne the unaccustomed
+     fatigues and hardships which it is the lot of the soldier to
+     endure; their zealous efforts to learn the multifarious duties of
+     the soldier; the high spirit they have exhibited when called on to
+     make long and painful marches to meet the enemy, and their bravery
+     in the field of battle have won my regard and affection. I shall
+     part from them with deep regret, and wish them, as the time of each
+     regiment expires, a happy return to their families and friends.
+
+                                      "---- ----,
+                                   "Brig. Gen'l Com'g Division."
+
+However profound the _regret_ of the General at parting, he must, from
+the phraseology of the above Order, have been conscious, that in his own
+conduct was to be found the reason that such regret was not in the least
+reciprocated by his command. So completely had he aliened the affections
+of officers and men that the ordinary salute in recognition of his rank
+was given grudgingly, if at all. When there is no gold in the character,
+men are not backward in proclaiming that they consider
+
+          "The rank is but the guinea's stamp."
+
+As their campaign approached its close, he added studied insult to long
+continued injury. His inconsistency, and willingness to make use of a
+quibble for the accomplishment of tyrannical purposes were shown by his
+non-approval of the requisition for dress coats, when it was handed in
+by the officer in command of the Regiment, a short time after the
+removal of the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel for refusing to obey the
+order requiring it. Charges had been preferred against his
+Adjutant-General for repeated instances of "Drunkenness upon Duty,"
+"Disgraceful Conduct," and "Conduct unbecoming an Officer and a
+Gentleman." They were returned to the Brigadier, through whom they had
+been submitted, with an insulting note, in which the General took
+occasion to state, by way of pre-judgment, that the charges were
+malicious and false, notwithstanding the scores of names appended as
+witnesses;--and that no _Volunteer Captain_ had a right to prefer
+charges against one of his Staff; and that it was the duty of the
+Brigadier to discountenance any charges of the kind. They were again
+forwarded, with the statement of the Brigadier, that the charges were
+eminently proper, and that he himself would prefer them, should
+objection be taken to the rank of the officer whose signature was
+attached. But pigeon-holing was a favorite smothering process at
+Division Head-Quarters, and the drunken and disgraceful conduct of the
+Adjutant-General remains unpunished.
+
+Charges supported by a large array of reputable witnesses, ranking from
+Brigadier to Privates, were preferred against the General himself, for
+"Drunkenness," "Un-officerlike conduct," "Conduct tending to mutiny,"
+and the utterance of the following treasonable and disloyal
+sentiments:--
+
+     "That he wished some one would ask the army to follow General
+     McClellan to Washington, and hurl the whole d----d pack into the
+     Potomac, and place General McClellan at the head of the
+     Government,--that the removal of the said General McClellan was a
+     political move to kill the said General; and that the army had
+     better be taken to Washington, and turned over to Lincoln."
+
+The charges and specifications, of one of the latter of which the above
+is an extract, alleged that the offence was committed at Camp near
+Warrenton, about the time of McClellan's removal. Whether they too have
+been pigeon-holed at Division Head-Quarters is not known. Attention to
+their merit was promised by superior officers. The patriotic sacrifices
+of our citizen soldiery are surely worthy of an unceasing and unsparing
+effort to procure loyal, temperate, and capable commanders. A timely
+trial, besides affording a salutary example, might have done much in
+preventing the disgraceful Rebel escape at Williamsport, which alone
+dims the glory of Gettysburg.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last that was seen of the exhorting Colonel and his Adjutant, was
+their sudden exit from the wood at Chancellorsville, in an early stage
+of Sunday's fight,--the one with a slight wound, and the other with a
+headache caused by the cannonading, as alleged. A performance which has
+not, thus far, brought the coveted star.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I propose the health of the Assistant Surgeon," said the Chaplain, at a
+supper given by the Sutler on the day of our muster out, and the
+occasion of the presentation of a costly sword to our worthy
+Colonel,--proposing thereby to make an advance towards healing their
+differences. The Doctor could not escape; and winking, as usual with him
+during excitement, he rose to his feet.
+
+"My ver goot kind friend, the English language he am a shtranger to me.
+No shpeak so goot as Shaplain, but py tam," and the Doctor struck the
+table until the plates rattled--"was py the Shaplain over six month,
+and my opinion is, Shaplains, women, and whiskey not goot for soldiers."
+
+The Doctor's look and tones were irresistibly ludicrous, and a roar of
+laughter at the expense of the Chaplain ran round the board.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Regiment returned with ranks sadly thinned. Many of the survivors;
+among them, most of the Field and Staff, the poetical and the preacher
+Lieutenants, and privates Tom and Harry,--have re-entered service. The
+two latter now carry swords.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bill the cook is the presiding genius of a restaurant; his face, in the
+way of reminding one of hot stews and pepper-pot, his best sign.
+Charlie, his assistant, was last noticed in a photographic establishment
+in Philadelphia; inclosing a full length card portrait of himself in
+uniform, as a Corporal in a Black Regiment, for the benefit of his
+master's family in Dixie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The little Irish Corporal was heard to tell a brawling peace man,--as he
+menaced with the stump of an arm,--lost at Chancellorsville--in a saloon
+a short time after his return, to "hould his tongue; that the boys who
+had lost limbs in defence of the country were the chappies to stump for
+freedom, and that they would keep down all fires in the rear, while our
+brave boys are fighting in front."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A late mail brings the news that our Western Virginia Captain is soon to
+take the field at the head of a Black Regiment, and that the happiest
+results are anticipated from his enforcement of military law and
+tactics, as learned by him under "Old Rosy," in Western Virginia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus we go on. Necessity hastens the progress of civilization and
+freedom. Desolating war--protracted by mistaken leniency--has educated
+the nation to a proper sense of the treason, and nerved it to the
+determination to crush it by all possible means and at every hazard. The
+man who has heretofore objected to Negro enlistments, acquiesces when
+his own name appears upon the list of the Enrolling Officer. The day
+that saw the change in the miserable, not to say treasonable, policy of
+alienating the only real friends we have had in the South, and their
+successful employment as soldiers, stands first in the decline of the
+Rebellion. Its suppression is fixed, and is to be measured by the vigor
+with which we press the war.
+
+          "Vengeance is secure to him
+          Who doth arm himself with right."
+
+
+                                   THE END.
+
+
+
+
+NEW BOOKS
+
+And New Editions Recently Issued by
+
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+LES MISERABLES.--The only unabridged English translation of "the
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+
+TEACH US TO PRAY.--A volume of devotional sermons on the Lord's Prayer.
+12mo. cloth bound, $1.00
+
+=M. Michelet's Works.=
+
+ LOVE (L'AMOUR).--Translated from the French.   12m. cl.,  $1.25
+ WOMAN (LA FEMME.)--Translated from the French.            $1.25
+ THE MORAL HISTORY OF WOMEN.-- do.                         $1.25
+ WOMAN MADE FREE.--From the French of D'Hericourt.         $1.25
+
+=Novels by Ruffini.=
+
+ DR. ANTONIO.--A love story of Italy.         12mo. cloth, $1.50
+ LAVINIA; OR, THE ITALIAN ARTIST.--               do.      $1.50
+ DEAR EXPERIENCE.--With humorous illustrations    do.      $1.25
+ VINCENZO; OR, SUNKEN ROCKS.--Paper covers.                $0.75
+
+=F. D. Guerrazzi.=
+
+BEATRICE CENCI.-A historical novel. Translated from the Italian; with a
+portrait of the Cenci, from Guido's famous picture in Rome. 12mo. cloth
+bound, $1.50
+
+=Fred. S. Cozzens.=
+
+THE SPARROWGRASS PAPERS.--A laughable picture of Sparrowgrass's
+trials in living in the country; with humorous illustrations by
+Darley.  12mo. cl. bound, $1.25
+
+=Epes Sargent.=
+
+PECULIAR.--A very clever new novel. 12mo. cloth, $1.50
+
+=Charles Reade.=
+
+THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH; OR, MAID, WIFE, AND WIDOW.--A magnificent
+historical novel. By the Author of "Peg Woffington," etc. Reade's best
+work. Octavo, cl. bd., $1.50
+
+=The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers.=
+
+A collection of exquisitely satirical and humorous military
+criticisms. Two series. 12mo. cloth bound, each, $1.25
+
+=T. S. Arthur's New Works.=
+
+ LIGHT ON SHADOWED PATHS.--        12m. cl., $1.25
+ OUT IN THE WORLD.--(In press.)         do.
+
+=Stephen Massett.=
+
+DRIFTING ABOUT.--By "Jeems Pipes," of Pipesville; with
+many comic illustrations. 12mo. cloth, $1.25
+
+=Joseph Rodman Drake.=
+
+THE CULPRIT FAY.--A faery poem; tinted paper, cloth, 50 cts.
+
+=Mother Goose for Grown Folks.=
+
+Humorous rhymes for grown people; based upon the famous
+"Mother Goose Melodies." Tinted paper, cl. bd., 75 cts.
+
+=Hearton Drille.=
+
+TACTICS; OR, CUPID IN SHOULDER STRAPS.--A vivacious and
+witty West Point love story. 12mo. cloth, $1.00
+
+=J. C. Jeaffreson.=
+
+A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS.--A humorous and entertaining volume
+of sketches about famous physicians and surgeons.
+12mo. cloth, $1.50
+
+=Jas. H. Hackett.=
+
+NOTES AND COMMENTS ON SHAKSPEARE.--By the great American
+Falstaff; with portrait of the Author. 12mo. cl., $1.50
+
+=New Sporting Work=
+
+THE GAME FISH OF THE NORTH.--An entertaining as well as
+instructive volume. Illustrated. 12mo. cloth, $1.50
+
+=Doesticks' Humorous Works.=
+
+ DOESTICKS; WHAT HE SAYS.--With comic illusts. 12m. cl., $1.50
+ PLURIBUSTAH.--                   do.             do.    $1.50
+ THE ELEPHANT CLUB.--             do.             do.    $1.50
+
+=H. De Balzac's Novels.=
+
+ CESAR BIROTTEAU.--   Translated from the French,     12m. cl., $1.00
+ PETTY ANNOYANCES OF MARRIED LIFE.--do.                  do.    $1.00
+ THE ALCHEMIST.--                   do.                  do.    $1.00
+ EUGENIE GRANDET.--                 do.                  do.    $1.00
+
+=D. D. Home (or Hume).=
+
+INCIDENTS IN MY LIFE.--By the celebrated spirit medium;
+with an introduction by Judge Edmonds. 12mo. cl., $1.25
+
+=Thomas Bailey Aldrich.=
+
+ BABIE BELL, AND OTHER POEMS.--   Blue and gold binding, $1.00
+ OUT OF HIS head.--An eccentric romance.  12mo. cl.,     $1.00
+
+=Adam Gurowski.=
+
+DIARY.--During the years 1861 to '63, in Washington. Two
+volumes, each, $1.25
+
+=Edmund C. Stedman.=
+
+ ALICE OF MONMOUTH.--       12mo., tinted paper, cloth, $1.00
+ LYRICS AND IDYLS.--                                    75 cts.
+ THE PRINCE'S BALL.--With humorous illustrations.       50 cts.
+
+=Alexander Von Humboldt.=
+
+LIFE AND TRAVELS.--With an introduction by Bayard Taylor.
+A book for every library. 12mo. cloth, $1.50
+
+=Richard H. Stoddard.=
+
+ THE KING'S BELL.--12mo. cloth bound, tinted paper,   75 cts.
+ THE MORGESONS.--A novel.  By Mrs. R. H. Stoddard.    $1.00
+
+=M. T. Walworth.=
+
+LULU.--A novel of life in Washington. 12mo. cloth, $1.25
+
+=Hugh Miller.=
+
+A LIFE of the great Geologist and Author.  12mo. clo., $1.50
+
+=Miss Dinah Muloch.=
+
+A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN.--A new work by the
+Author of "John Halifax," etc. 12mo. cloth, $1.25
+
+=Isaac Taylor.=
+
+THE SPIRIT OF HEBREW POETRY.--With a biographical introduction
+by Wm. Adams, D.D., of N. Y.  8vo. cl., $2.50
+
+
+ =Miscellaneous Works=
+
+ HUSBAND & WIFE; OR, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.--            12mo. cl., $1.25
+ ROCKFORD.--A novel. By Mrs. L. D. Umsted.               do.    $1.00
+ SOUTHWOLD.--do.              do.                        do.    $1.00
+ WANDERINGS OF A BEAUTY.--By Mrs. Edwin James.           do.    $1.00
+ THE YACHTMAN'S PRIMER.--By T. R. Warren.                do.    50 cts.
+ SPREES AND SPLASHES.--By Henry Morford.                 do.    $1.00
+ THE U. S. TAX LAW.--"Government Edition."               do.    75 cts.
+ THE PRISONER OF STATE.--By D. A. Mahony.                do.    $1.25
+ THE PARTISAN LEADER.--By Beverly Tucker.                do.    $1.25
+ CHINA AND THE CHINESE.--By W. L. G. Smith.              do.    $1.00
+ AROUND THE PYRAMIDS.--By Gen. Aaron Ward.               do.    $1.25
+ TREATISE ON DEAFNESS.--By E. B. Lighthill, M.D.         do.    $1.00
+ THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.--By John G. Saxe.                  do.    50 cts.
+ NATIONAL CHESS BOOK.--By D. W. Fiske.                   do.    $1.50
+ GARRET VAN HORN.--By J. S. Sauzade.                     do.    $1.25
+ TWENTY YEARS AROUND THE WORLD. J. G. Vassar.           8vo.    $3.50
+ NATIONAL HYMNS.--By Richard Grant White.               8vo.    $1.00
+ FORT LAFAYETTE.--By Benjamin Wood.                12mo. cloth, $1.00
+ ALFIO BALZANI--By Domenico Minnelli.                    do.    $1.25
+ THE NATIONAL SCHOOL FOR THE SOLDIER.--                  do.    50 cts.
+ ORIENTAL HAREMS.--Translated from the French.           do.    $1.25
+ LOLA MONTEZ.--Her life and lectures.                    do.    $1.50
+ ESSAYS.--By George Brimley.                             do.    $1.25
+ GEN. NATHANIEL LYON.--A life.                           do.    $1.00
+ PHILIP THAXTER.--A novel.                               do.    $1.00
+ FROM HAYING TIME TO HOPPING.--A novel.                  do.    $1.00
+ JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE.--By E. S. Gould.              do.    $1.00
+ MARRIED OFF.--An illustrated poem.                      do.    50 cts.
+ ROUMANIA.--By Dr. Jas. O. Noyes.                        do.    $1.50
+ HUSBAND _vs._ WIFE.--A poem illustrated.                do.    50 cts.
+ BROWN'S CARPENTER'S ASSISTANT.--                       4to.    $5.00
+ TRANSITION.--Edited by Rev. H. S. Carpenter.        12mo. cl., $1.00
+ DEBT AND GRACE.--By Rev. C. F. Hudson.                  do.    $1.25
+ THE VAGABOND.--By Adam Badeau                           do.    $1.00
+ COSMOGONY.--By Thos. A. Davies                          8vo.   $1.50
+ ANSWER TO HUGH MILLER.--By T. A. Davies.            12mo. cl., $1.25
+ EDGAR POE AND HIS CRITICS.--By Mrs. Whitman,            do.    75 cts.
+ HARTLEY NORMAN.--A novel                                do.    $1.25
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+The author, "A Citizen-Soldier", is pseudonym for William H. Armstrong.
+"Old Pigey" is believed to be based on General Arthur A. Humphreys.
+
+This text has been edited to standardize representation of censored
+words. Additionally, hyphens have been added to some phrases, to provide
+consistency.
+
+"=" has been used in this text edition of the book to indicate where
+the original book used bold fonts; + has been used to indicate a font
+change.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, by 
+William H. Armstrong
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED-TAPE AND PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS ***
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+***** This file should be named 23565-8.txt or 23565-8.zip *****
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Red-tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, as Seen from the Ranks During a Campaign by the Army of the Potomac, by A Citizen-Soldier
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, by 
+William H. Armstrong
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals
+       As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac
+
+Author: William H. Armstrong
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2007 [EBook #23565]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED-TAPE AND PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>RED-TAPE</h1>
+
+<h1>AND</h1>
+
+<h1>PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS:</h1>
+
+<h2>AS SEEN FROM THE RANKS</h2>
+
+<h2>DURING A</h2>
+
+<h2>Campaign in the Army of the Potomac.</h2>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>A CITIZEN-SOLDIER.</h2>
+
+<p class="center">"We must be brief when Traitors brave the Field."</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">NEW YORK:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">M DCCC LXIV.
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center">Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by</p>
+
+<p class="center">GEO. W. CARLETON,</p>
+
+<p class="center">In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
+Southern District of New York.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">R. CRAIGHEAD,</p>
+
+<p class="center">Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper</p>
+
+<p class="center">Carton Building,</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>81, 83, and 85 Centre Street</i>.
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h3>PREFACE.</h3>
+
+<p>"Greek-fire has shivered the statue of John C. Calhoun in the streets of
+the City of Charleston,"&mdash;so the papers say. Whether true or not, the
+Greek-fire of the righteous indignation of a loyal people is fast
+shattering the offspring of his infamous teachings,&mdash;the armed treason
+of the South, and its more cowardly ally the insidious treachery that
+lurks under doubtful cover in the loyal States. In thunder tones do the
+masses declare, that now and for ever, they repudiate the Treason and
+despise the Traitor. Nobly are the hands of our Honest President
+sustained in prosecuting this most righteous war.</p>
+
+<p>In a day like this, the least that can be expected of any citizen
+is&mdash;duty. We are all co-partners in our beneficent government. We should
+be co-laborers for her defence. Jealous of the interests of her brave
+soldiery; for they are our own. Proud of their noble deeds; they
+constitute our National Heritage.</p>
+
+<p>If these campaign sketches, gathered in actual service during 1862-3,
+and grouped during the spare hours of convalescence from a camp fever,
+correct one of the least of the abuses in our military machinery&mdash;if
+they lighten the toil of the humblest of our soldiers, or nerve anew the
+resolves of loyalty tempted to despair, the writer will have no reason
+to complain of labor lost. Great latitude of excuse for the existence of
+abuses must be allowed, when we consider the suddenness with which our
+volunteers sprang into ranks at the outset of the Rebellion. Now that
+the warfare is a system, there is less reason for their continuance.
+Reformers must, however, remember, that to keep our citizen-soldiery
+effective, they must not make too much of the citizen and too little of
+the soldier. Abuses must be corrected under the laws; but to be
+corrected at all they must first be exposed.</p>
+
+<p>Drunkenness, half-heartedness, and senseless routine, have done much to
+cripple the patriotic efforts of our people. The patriotism of the man
+who at this day doubts the policy of their open reproof can well be
+questioned. West Point has, in too many instances, nursed imbecility and
+treason; but in our honest contempt for the small men of whom, in common
+with other institutions, she has had her share,&mdash;we must not ignore
+those bright pages of our history adorned with the skill and heroism of
+her nobler sons. McClellanism did not follow its chief from Warrenton;
+or Burnside's earnestness, Hooker's dash, and Meade's soldierly stand at
+Gettysburg, backed as they were by the heroic fighting of the Army of
+the Potomac, would have had, as they deserved, more decisive results.</p>
+
+<p>The Young Men of the Land would the writer address in the following
+pages&mdash;"because they are strong," and in their strength is the nation's
+hope. In certain prospect of victory over the greatest enemy we have yet
+had as a nation&mdash;the present infamous rebellion&mdash;we can well await
+patiently the correction of minor evils.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Meanwhile we'll sacrifice to liberty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The generous plan of power delivered down<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">From age to age by your renowned forefathers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">(So dearly bought, the price of so much blood;)<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Oh, let it never perish in your hands!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But piously transmit it to your children.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Do thou, great liberty! inspire our souls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And make our lives in thy possession happy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>February, 1864.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h3>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#RED-TAPE"><b>CHAPTER I.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Advent of our General of Division&mdash;Camp near Frederick City,
+Maryland&mdash;The Old Revolutionary Barracks at Frederick&mdash;An Irish
+Corporal's Recollections of the First Regiment of Volunteers from
+Pennsylvania&mdash;Punishment in the Old First, Page 9</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Treason at Harper's Ferry&mdash;Rebel Occupation of Frederick&mdash;Patriotism
+of the Ladies of Frederick&mdash;A Rebel Guard nonplussed by a Lady&mdash;The
+Approach to Antietam&mdash;Our Brigadier cuts Red-Tape&mdash;<span class="smcap">The Blunder of the
+day after Antietam</span>&mdash;The Little Irish Corporal's idea of Strategy, 15</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The March to the River&mdash;Our Citizen Soldiery&mdash;Popularity of Commanders,
+how Lost and how Won&mdash;The Rebel Dead&mdash;How the Rebels repay Courtesy, 27</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>A Regimental Baker&mdash;Hot Pies&mdash;Position of the Baker in line of
+Battle&mdash;Troubles of the Baker&mdash;A Western Virginia Captain on a Whiskey
+Scent&mdash;The Baker's Story&mdash;How to obtain Political Influence&mdash;Dancing
+Attendance at Washington&mdash;What Simon says&mdash;Confiscation of Whiskey, 33</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Scene at the Surgeon's Quarters&mdash;Our Little Dutch Doctor&mdash;Incidents
+of his Practice&mdash;His Messmate the Chaplain&mdash;The Western Virginia
+Captain's account of a Western Virginia Chaplain&mdash;His Solitary Oath&mdash;How
+he Preached, how he Prayed, and how he Bush-whacked&mdash;His Revenge of
+Snowden's Death&mdash;How the little Dutch Doctor applied the Captain's
+Story, 47</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>A Day at Division Head-Quarters&mdash;The Judge Advocate&mdash;The tweedle-dum and
+tweedle-dee of Red-Tape as understood by Pigeon-hole Generals&mdash;Red Tape
+Reveries&mdash;French Authorities on Pigeon-hole Investigations&mdash;An
+Obstreperous Court and Pigeon-hole Strictures&mdash;Disgusting Head-Quarter
+Profanity, 59</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac&mdash;Fitz John's Rail Order&mdash;Rails for
+Corps Head-Quarters <i>versus</i> Rails for Hospitals&mdash;The Western Virginia
+Captain&mdash;Old Rosy, and How to Silence Secesh Women&mdash;The Old Woman's
+Fixin's&mdash;The Captain's Orderly, 70</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Reconnoissance&mdash;Shepherdstown&mdash;Punch and Patriotism&mdash;Private Tom on
+West Point and Southern Sympathy&mdash;The Little Irish Corporal on John
+Mitchell&mdash;A Skirmish&mdash;Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and
+Chaplain&mdash;Battle of Falling Waters not intended&mdash;Story of the Little
+Irish Corporal&mdash;Patterson's Folly, or Treason, 83</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>Reconnoissance concluded&mdash;What we Saw and What we didn't See, and what
+the Good Public Read&mdash;Pigeon-hole Generalship and the Press&mdash;The
+Preacher Lieutenant and how he Recruited&mdash;Comparative Merits of Black
+Union Men and White Rebels&mdash;A Ground Blast, and its effect upon a
+Pigeon-hole General&mdash;Staff Officers Striking a Snag in the Western
+Virginia Captain&mdash;Why the People have a right to expect Active Army
+Movements&mdash;Red Tape and the Sick List&mdash;Pigeon-holing at Division
+Head-quarters, 100</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>Departure from Sharpsburg Camp&mdash;The Old Woman of Sandy Hook&mdash;Harper's
+Ferry&mdash;South sewing Dragon's Teeth by shedding Old John's Blood&mdash;The
+Dutch Doctor and the Boar&mdash;Beauties of Tobacco&mdash;Camp Life on the
+Character&mdash;Patrick, Brother to the Little Corporal&mdash;General Patterson no
+Irishman&mdash;Guarding a Potato Patch in Dixie&mdash;The Preacher Lieutenant on
+Emancipation&mdash;Inspection and the Exhorting Colonel&mdash;The Scotch Tailor on
+Military Matters, 116</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>Snicker's Gap&mdash;Private Harry on the "Anaconda"&mdash;Not inclined to turn
+Boot-Black-"Oh! why did you go for a Soldier?"&mdash;The
+ex-News-Boy&mdash;Pigeon-hole Generalship on the March&mdash;The Valley of the
+Shenandoah&mdash;A Flesh Carnival&mdash;The Dutch Doctor on a Horse-dicker&mdash;An Old
+Rebel, and how he parted with his Apple-Brandy&mdash;Toasting the
+"Union"&mdash;Spruce Retreats, 137</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The March to Warrenton&mdash;Secesh Sympathy and Quarter-Master's
+Receipts&mdash;Middle-Borough&mdash;The Venerable Uncle Ned and his Story of the
+Captain of the Tigers&mdash;The Adjutant on Strategy&mdash;Red Tapism and
+Mac-Napoleonism&mdash;Movement Stopped&mdash;Division Head-Quarters out of
+Whiskey&mdash;Stragglers and Marauders&mdash;A Summary Proceeding&mdash;Persimmons and
+Picket-Duty&mdash;A Rebellious Pig&mdash;McClellanism, 160</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>Camp near Warrenton&mdash;Stability of the Republic&mdash;Measures, not Men,
+regarded by the Public&mdash;Removal of McClellan&mdash;Division Head-Quarters a
+House of Mourning&mdash;A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point
+Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box&mdash;Head-Quarter Murmuring and
+Mutterings&mdash;Departure of Little Mac and the Prince&mdash;Cheering by Word of
+Command&mdash;The Southern Saratoga&mdash;Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure,
+178</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>A Skulker and the Dutch Doctor&mdash;A Review of the Corps by Old Joe&mdash;A
+Change of Base; what it means to the Soldier, and what to the
+Public&mdash;Our Quarter-Master and General Hooker&mdash;The Movement by the Left
+Flank&mdash;A Division General and Dog driving&mdash;The Desolation of Virginia&mdash;A
+Rebel Land-Owner and the Quarter-Master&mdash;"No Hoss, Sir!"&mdash;The Poetical
+Lieutenant unappreciated&mdash;Mutton or Dog?&mdash;Desk Drudgery and Senseless
+Routine, 193</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>Red-Tape and the Soldier's Widow&mdash;Pigeon-holing at Head-Quarters and
+Weeping at the Family Fireside&mdash;A Pigeon-hole General Outwitted&mdash;Fishing
+for a Discharge&mdash;The Little Irish Corporal on Topographical
+Engineers&mdash;Guard Duty over a Whiskey Barrel, 210</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Battle of Fredericksburg&mdash;Screwing Courage up to the Sticking
+Point&mdash;Consolations of a Flask&mdash;Pigeon-hole Nervousness&mdash;Abandonment of
+Knapsacks&mdash;Incidents before, during, and after the Fight, 225</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Sorrows of the Sutler&mdash;The Sutler's Tent&mdash;Generals manufactured by
+the Dailies&mdash;Fighting and Writing&mdash;A Glandered
+Horse&mdash;Courts-martial&mdash;Mania of a Pigeon-hole General on the
+Subject&mdash;Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel in Strait-Jackets, 247</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>Dress Coats <i>versus</i> Blouses&mdash;Military Law&mdash;Bill the
+Cook&mdash;Courts-Martial&mdash;Important Decision in Military Law&mdash;A Man with Two
+Blouses on, can be compelled to put a Dress Coat on top&mdash;A Colored
+French Cook and a Beefy-browed Judge-Advocate&mdash;The Mud March&mdash;No
+Pigeon-holing on a Whiskey Scent&mdash;Old Joe in Command&mdash;Dissolution of
+Partnership between the Dutch Doctor and the Chaplain, 264</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Presentation Mania&mdash;The Western Virginia Captain in the War
+Department&mdash;Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton&mdash;Capture of the Dutch
+Doctor&mdash;A Genuine Newspaper Sell, 283</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Army again on the Move&mdash;Pack Mules and Wagon Trains&mdash;A Negro
+Prophetess&mdash;The Wilderness&mdash;Hooped Skirts and Black Jack&mdash;The Five Days'
+Fight at Chancellorsville&mdash;Terrible Death of an Aged Slave&mdash;A
+Pigeon-hole General's "Power in Reserve," 295</p>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI.</b></a><br /></p>
+
+<p>The Pigeon-hole General and his Adjutant, under Charges&mdash;The Exhorting
+Colonel's Adieu to the Sunday Fight at Chancellorsville; Reasons
+thereof&mdash;Speech of the Dutch Doctor in Reply to a Peace-Offering from
+the Chaplain&mdash;The Irish Corporal stumping for Freedom&mdash;Black Charlie's
+Compliments to his Master&mdash;Western Virginia at the Head of a Black
+Regiment, 313</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 9 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="RED-TAPE" id="RED-TAPE"></a>RED-TAPE</h2>
+
+<h2>AND</h2>
+
+<h2>PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS.</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+
+<p><i>The Advent of our General of Division&mdash;Camp near Frederick City,
+Maryland&mdash;The Old Revolutionary Barracks at Frederick&mdash;An Irish
+Corporal's Recollections of the First Regiment of Volunteers from
+Pennsylvania&mdash;Punishment in the Old First.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>"Our new Division-General, boys!" exclaimed a sergeant of the 210th
+Pennsylvania Volunteers, whose attention and head were turned at the
+clatter of horses' hoofs to the rear. "I heard an officer say that he
+would be along to-day, and I recognise his description."</p>
+
+<p>The men, although weary and route-worn, straightened up, dressed their
+ranks, and as the General and Staff rode past, some enthusiastic soldier
+proposed cheers for our new Commander. They started with a will, but the
+General's doubtful look, as interpreted by the men, gave little or no
+encouragement, and the effort ended in a few ragged discordant yells.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a strange-looking old covey any how," said one of the boys in an
+undertone. "Did you <!-- Page 10 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>notice that red muffler about his neck, and how
+pinched up and crooked his hat is, and that odd-looking moustache, and
+how savagely he cocks his eyes through his spectacles?"</p>
+
+<p>"They say," replied the sergeant, "that we are the first troops that he
+has commanded. He was a staff officer before in the Topographical Corps.
+Didn't you notice the T.C. on his coat buttons?"</p>
+
+<p>"And is he going to practise upon us?" blurts out a bustling red-faced
+little Irish corporal. "Be Jabers, that accounts for the crooked cow
+road we have marched through the last day&mdash;miles out of the way, and
+niver a chance for coffee."</p>
+
+<p>"You are too fast, Terence," said the sergeant; "if he belongs to the
+Topographical Corps, he ought at least to know the roads."</p>
+
+<p>"And didn't you say not two hours ago that we were entirely out of the
+way, and that we had been wandering as crooked as the creek that flows
+back of the old town we are from, and nearly runs through itself in a
+dozen places?"</p>
+
+<p>The sergeant admitted that he had said so, but stated that perhaps the
+General was not to blame, and added somewhat jocosely: "At any rate the
+winding of the creek makes those beautiful walks we have so much enjoyed
+in summer evenings."</p>
+
+<p>"Beautiful winding walks! is it, sergeant! Shure and whin you have your
+forty pound wait upon your back, forty rounds of lead and powdher in
+your cartridge-box, and twenty more in your pocket, three days' rations
+in your haversack, a musket on your shoulder, and army brogans on your
+throtters, you are just about the first man that I know of to take
+straight cuts."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was a close warm day near the middle of September. <!-- Page 11 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>The roads were
+dusty and the troops exhausted. Two days previously the brigade to which
+they belonged had left the pleasantest of camps, called "Camp Whipple"
+in honor of their former and favorite Division Commander. Situated in an
+orchard on the level brow of a hill that overlooked Washington, the
+imposing Capitol, the broad expanse of the Potomac dotted with frequent
+craft, the many national buildings, and scenery of historic interest,
+the men left it with regret, but carried with them recollections that
+often in times of future depression revived their patriotic ardor.</p>
+
+<p>Over dusty roads, through the muddy aqueduct of the Chesapeake and Ohio
+Canal, hurried on over the roughly paved streets of Georgetown, and
+through the suburbs of Washington, they finally halted for the night,
+and, as it chanced through lack of orders, for the succeeding day also,
+near Meridian Hill. Under orders to join the Fifth Army Corps commanded
+by Major-General Fitz John Porter, to which the Division had been
+previously assigned, the march was resumed on the succeeding day, which
+happened to be Sunday, and in the afternoon of which our chapter opens.</p>
+
+<p>A march of another day brought the Brigade to a recent Rebel camp
+ground. Traces of their occupancy were found not only in their
+depredations in the neighborhood destructive of railroad bridges, but
+also in letters and wall-paper envelopes adorned with the lantern-jawed
+phiz of Jefferson Davis. The latter were sought after with avidity as
+soon as ranks were broken and tents pitched; the more eagerly perhaps
+for the reason that during the greater part of their previous month of
+service they had been frequently within sound of rebel cannon, although
+but once <!-- Page 12 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>under their fire. During the previous day, in fact, they had
+marched to the music of the artillery of South Mountain.</p>
+
+<p>That night awakened lively recollections in the mind of Terence McCarty,
+our lively little Irish corporal. His duty for the time as corporal of a
+relief gave him ample opportunity to indulge them. He had belonged to
+the old First Pennsylvania Regiment of three months men, that a little
+over a year before, when Maryland was halting between loyalty and
+disloyalty, had spent its happiest week of service in the yard of the
+revolutionary barracks in the city of Frederick. Terence was but two
+short miles from the spot. Brimfull of the memories, he turned to a
+comrade, who had also belonged to the First, and who with others chanced
+to stand near.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Jack! Do you recollect the ould First and Frederick, and do you
+know that we are but two miles and short ones at that from the blissed
+ould white-washed barracks, full of all kind of quare guns and canteens
+looking like barrels cut down; and the Parade Ground where our ould
+Colonel used to come his 'Briskly, men! Briskly,' when he'd put us
+through the manual, and where so many ladies would come to see our
+ivolutions, and where they set the big table for us on the Fourth, and
+where&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on, corporal! you can't give that week's history to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"I was only going to obsarve, Jack, that I feel like a badly used man."</p>
+
+<p>"How so, Terence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why you see nearly ivery officer, commissioned and non-commissioned, of
+the ould First has been promoted. The Colonel was too ould for service,
+or my head on it, he would have had a star. Just look <!-- Page 13 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>at the captains
+by way of sample&mdash;Company A, a Lieutenant-Colonel, expecting and
+desarving an eagle ivery day; Company B, a Lieutenant-Colonel; Company
+C, our own Lieutenant-Colonel; Company D, a Brigadier for soldierly
+looks, daring, and dash; Company E, a Captain in an aisy berth in the
+regular service; Company F, a Colonel; Company G, a Major; Company H, a
+Lieutenant-Colonel; Company I, I have lost sight of, and the
+lion-hearted captain of Company K, doing a lion's share of work at the
+head of a regiment in Tennessee. Now, Jack, the under officers and many
+privates run pretty much the same way, but not quite as high. Bad luck
+to me, I was fifth corporal thin and am eighth now&mdash;promoted
+crab-fashion. Fortune's wheel gives me many a turn, Jack! but always
+stops with me on the lower side."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw you on the upper side once," retorted Jack roguishly.</p>
+
+<p>"And whin? may I ask."</p>
+
+<p>"When, do you say? why, when you took about half a canteen too much, and
+that same old colonel had you tied on the upper side of a barrel on the
+green in front of the barracks."</p>
+
+<p>"Bad luck to an ill-natured memory, Jack, for stirring that up," replied
+the corporal, breaking in upon the laughter that followed, "but I now
+recollect, it was the day before you slipped the guard whin the colonel
+gave you a barrel uniform with your head through the end, and kept me
+for two mortal long hours in the hot sun, a tickling of you under the
+nose with a straw, and daubing molasses on your chaps to plaze the
+flies, to the great admiration of a big crowd of ladies and gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>Jack subsided, and the hearty laughter at the corporal's <!-- Page 14 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>ready retort
+was broken a few minutes later by a loud call for the corporal of the
+guard, which hurried Terence away, dispersed the crowd, and might as
+well end this chapter.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 15 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Treason at Harper's Ferry&mdash;Rebel Occupation of
+Frederick&mdash;Patriotism of the Ladies of Frederick&mdash;A Rebel Guard
+nonplussed by a Lady&mdash;The Approach to Antietam&mdash;Our Brigadier cuts Red
+Tape&mdash;The Blunder of the day after Antietam&mdash;The little Irish Corporal's
+idea of Strategy.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>The Brigade did not rest long in its new camp. The day and a half,
+however, passed there had many incidents to be remembered by. Fish were
+caught in abundance from the beautiful Monocacy. But the most impressive
+scene was the long procession of disarmed, dejected men, who had been
+basely surrendered at Harper's Ferry, and were now on their way
+homeward, on parole. Many and deep were the curses they uttered against
+their late commanders. "Boys, <i>we've</i> been sold! Look out," cried a
+comely bright-eyed young officer of eighteen or thereabouts. "That we
+have," added a chaplain, who literally bore the cross upon his shoulders
+in a pair of elegant straps. When will earnest men cease to be foiled in
+this war by treacherous commanders? was an inquiry that pressed itself
+anxiously home.</p>
+
+<p>But the thunders of Antietam were reverberating through that mountainous
+region, distinctly heard in all their many echoes, and of course the
+all-absorbing topic. At 3 <span class="smcap">p. m.</span> orders came to move a short distance
+<!-- Page 16 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>beyond Frederick. The division was rapidly formed, and the men marched
+joyously along through the streets of Frederick, already crowded with
+our own and Rebel wounded, to the sound of lively martial music; but
+none more joyously than the members of the old First, whose
+recollections were brisk of good living as they recognised in many a
+lady a former benefactress. Bradley T. Johnson's race, that commenced
+with his infamously prepared and lying handbills, was soon run in
+Frederick. No one of the border cities has been more undoubtedly or
+devotedly patriotic. Its prominent ministers at an early day took bold
+positions. The ladies were not behind, and many a sick and wounded
+soldier will bless them to his latest hour. The world has heard of the
+well deserved fame of Florence Nightingale. History will hold up to a
+nation's gratitude thousands of such ministering angels, who, moving in
+humbler circles, perhaps, are none the less entitled to a nation's
+praise. "Great will be their reward."</p>
+
+<p>To show the spirit that emboldened the ladies of Frederick, a notable
+instance is related as having occurred during the Rebel occupation of
+the city under General Stuart. Many Union ladies had left the place. Not
+so, however, with Mrs. D., the lively, witty, and accomplished wife of a
+prominent Lutheran minister. The Union sick and wounded that remained
+demanded attention, and for their sake, as well as from her own high
+spirit, she resolved to stay. Miss Annie C., the beautiful and talented
+daughter of Ex-U. S. Senator C., an intimate friend of Mrs. D., through
+like devotion, also remained. Rebel officers, gorgeous in grey and gilt
+lace, many of them old residents of the place, strutted about the
+streets. The ragged privates begged from door to door. Mrs. D., <!-- Page 17 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>and her
+friend had been separated several days&mdash;a long period considering their
+close intimacy and their present surroundings. Mrs. D. resolved to visit
+her, and with her to resolve was to execute. Threading her way through
+the crowded streets, heeding not the jeers or insults of the rebel
+soldiery, she soon came in front of the Cooper Mansion, to find a rebel
+flag floating from an upper window, and a well dressed soldierly looking
+greyback, with bayonet fixed, pacing his beat in front. Nothing daunted,
+Mrs. D. approached. "Halt," was the short sharp hail of the sentinel, as
+he brought his bayonet to the charge. "Who is quartered here?" asked
+Mrs. D., gradually nearing the sentry. "Maj.-Gen. Stuart," was the brief
+reply, "I want to visit a lady acquaintance in the house." "My orders
+are strict, madam, that no one can cross my beat without a pass." "<i>Pass
+or no pass, I must and will go into that house</i>," and quick as thought
+this frail lady dashed aside the bayonet, sprang across the beat, and
+entered the hall, while the sentry confused, uncertain whether he should
+follow or not, stood a minute or two before resuming his step. From an
+upper window Gen. Stuart laughed heartily at the scene, and was loud in
+praise of her tact and pluck.</p>
+
+<p>But all this time our division has been moving through the streets of
+Frederick, in fact has reached what was to have been its camping ground
+for the night. The reader will excuse me; older heads and more exact
+pens have frequently, when ladies intervened, made much longer
+digressions.</p>
+
+<p>The halt was but for a moment. An aide-de-camp, weary-looking, on a
+horse covered with foam, dashed up to the division commander, bearing an
+order from the commander-in-chief that the division must join its corps
+at Antietam without delay. The fight might <!-- Page 18 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>be renewed in the morning,
+and if so, fresh troops were needed. The order was communicated through
+the brigade commanders to commanders of regiments, while the subordinate
+field officers went from company to company encouraging the men, telling
+them that a glorious victory had been gained, that the rebels were
+hemmed in by the river on three sides, and our army in front; that there
+was but one ford, and that a poor one, and that the rebels must either
+take to the river indiscriminately, be cut to pieces, or surrender. In
+short, that we had them.</p>
+
+<p>These statements were received with the most enthusiastic applause. As
+the Division proceeded on its march, they were confirmed by reports of
+spectators and wounded men in ambulances. What was the most significant
+fact to the men who had seen the thousands of stragglers and skulkers
+from the second battle of Bull Run, was the entire absence of straggling
+or demoralization of any kind. Our troops must have been victorious, was
+the ready and natural suggestion. The thought nerved them, and pushing
+up their knapsacks, and hitching up their pantaloons, they trudged with
+a will up the mountain slope.</p>
+
+<p>That mountain slope!&mdash;it would well repay a visit from one of our large
+cities, to descend that mountain a bright summer afternoon. A sudden
+turn in the road brings to view the sun-gilded spires of the city of
+Frederick, rising as if by enchantment from one of the loveliest of
+valleys. Many of the descriptions of foreign scenery pale before the
+realities of this view. When will our Hawthornes and our Taylors be just
+to the land of their birth?</p>
+
+<p>Scenery on that misty night could not delay the troops. The mountain-top
+was gained. About half way down the northern slope of the mountain the
+<!-- Page 19 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>Division halted to obtain the benefits of a spring fifty yards from the
+road. A steep path led to it, and one by one the men filed down to fill
+their canteens. The delay was terribly tedious, and entirely
+unnecessary, as five minutes' inquiry among the men, many of whom were
+familiar with the road, would have informed the Commanding General of
+abundance of excellent water, a short mile beyond, and close by the
+wayside. Pride, which prevails to an unwarranted extent among too many
+regular officers, is frequently the cause of much vexation. Inquiry and
+exertion to lighten the labors of our brave volunteers would, with every
+earnest officer, be unceasing. A short distance further a halt was
+ordered for coffee, that "sublime beverage of Mocha," indispensable in
+camp or in the field. Strange to say, our brigadier, who habitually
+confined himself closely to cold water, was one of the most particular
+of officers in ordering halts for coffee.</p>
+
+<p>South Mountain was crossed, but in the dusky light little could be seen
+of the devastation caused by the late battle. "Yonder," said a wounded
+man who chanced to be passing, "our gallant General lost his life." The
+brave, accomplished Reno! How dearly our national integrity is
+maintained! Brave spirit, in your life you thought it well worth the
+cost; your death can never be considered a vain sacrifice!</p>
+
+<p>Boonsboro' was entered about day-break. The road to Sharpsburg was here
+taken, and at 7&frac12; <span class="smcap">a. m.</span>, having marched during that night twenty-eight
+miles, the Division stood at arms near the battle-ground along a road
+crowded with ammunition trains. Inquiry was made as to the ammunition,
+and the number of rounds for each man ordered to be increased
+immediately from forty to sixty.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 20 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p><p>"Pioneer! hand me that axe," said our brigadier, dismounting.
+"Sergeant," addressing the sergeant of the ammunition guard, "hand out
+those boxes." "The Division General has given strict orders, if you
+please, General, that the boxes must pass regularly through the hands of
+the ordnance officer," said the sergeant, saluting. "I am <i>acting</i>
+ordnance officer; hand out the boxes!" was the command, that from its
+tone and manner brooked no delay. A box was at his feet. In an instant a
+clever blow from the muscular arm of the hero of Winchester laid it
+open. Another and another, until the orderly sergeant had given the
+required number of rounds to every man in the brigade. "Attention!
+Column! Shoulder Arms! Right Face! Right Shoulder Shift Arms!" and at a
+quickstep the brigade moved towards the field.</p>
+
+<p>After passing long trains of ambulances and ammunition wagons, the boys
+were saluted as they passed through the little town of Keetysville by
+exhortations from the wounded, who crowded every house, and forgot their
+wounds in their enthusiasm. "Fellows, you've got 'em! Give 'em h&mdash;l!"
+yelled an artillery sergeant, for whom a flesh wound in the arm was
+being dressed at the window by a kind-hearted looking country woman.
+"Give it to 'em!" "They're fast!" "This good lady knows every foot of
+the ground, and says so." The good lady smiled assent, and was saluted
+with cheer upon cheer. Dead horses, a few unburied men, marks of shot in
+the buildings, now told of immediate proximity to the field. A short
+distance further, and the Division was drawn up in line of battle,
+behind one of the singular ridges that mark this memorable ground.
+Fragments of shells, haversacks, knapsacks, and the like, told how hotly
+the ground had been contested on the previous day. <!-- Page 21 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>The order to load
+was quickly obeyed, and the troops, with the remainder of the Fifth
+Corps in their immediate neighborhood, stood to arms.</p>
+
+<p>A large number of officers lined the crest of the ridge, and thither,
+with leave, the Colonel and Lieut.-Colonel of the 210th repaired. The
+scene that met their view was grand beyond description. Another somewhat
+higher and more uniform ridge, running almost parallel to the ridge or
+rather connected series of ridges on one of which the officers stood,
+was the strong position held by the rebels on the previous day. Between
+the ridges flowed the sluggish Antietam, dammed up for milling purposes.
+Beyond, on the crest of the hill, gradually giving way, were the rebel
+skirmishers; our own were as gradually creeping up the slope. The
+skirmishers were well deployed upon both sides; and the parallel flashes
+and continuous rattle of their rifles gave an interest to the scene,
+ineffaceable in the minds of spectators.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you hear that shell, you can see the smoke just this side of
+Sharpsburg on our left," said the Colonel, addressing his companion.
+"There it bursts," and a puff of white smoke expanded itself in the air
+fifty yards above one of our batteries posted on a ridge on the left.
+Two pieces gave quick reply. "Officers, to your posts," shouted an
+aide-de-camp, and forthwith the officers galloped to their respective
+commands.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, the ball is about to open, put your best foot foremost," said the
+Colonel to his regiment. The men, excited, supposing themselves about to
+pass their first ordeal of battle, straightened up, held their pieces
+with tightened grips, and nervously awaited the "forward." Beyond the
+sharp crack of the rifles, however, no further sound was heard. Hour
+after hour passed. At length an aide from the staff of the Division
+<!-- Page 22 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>General cantered to where the Brigadier, conversing with several of his
+field officers, stood, and informed him that it was the pleasure of the
+Division General that the men should be made comfortable, <i>as no
+immediate attack was apprehended</i>. "No immediate attack apprehended!"
+echoed the Colonel. "Of course not. Why don't we attack them?"</p>
+
+<p>The aide flushed, said somewhat excitedly: "That was the order I
+received, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, cook your coffee," said our Brigadier, somewhat mechanically&mdash;a
+brown study pictured in his face.</p>
+
+<p>The field officers scattered to relieve their hunger, or rather their
+anxiety as to the programme of the day.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie," said the Lieut.-Col., addressing a good-humored looking
+Contraband, "get our coffee ready."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel, with the other field and staff officers, seated themselves
+upon knapsacks unslung for their accommodation, silently, each
+apparently waiting upon the other to open the conversation. In the
+meantime several company officers who had heard of the order gathered
+about them.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand this move at all," at length said the Colonel
+nervously. "Here we are, with a reserve of thirty thousand men who have
+not been in the fight at all, with ammunition untouched, perfectly fresh
+and eager for the move. The troops that were engaged yesterday have for
+the most part had a good night's rest and are ready and anxious for a
+brush to-day. The rebels, hemmed in on three sides by the river&mdash;with a
+miserable ford, and that only in one place, as every body knows, and as
+there is no earthly excuse for our generals not knowing, as this ground
+was canvassed often enough in the three months' <!-- Page 23 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>service. Why don't we
+advance?" continued the Colonel, rising. "Their sharpshooters are near
+the woods now, and when they reach it, they'll run like Devils. Why
+don't we advance? We can drive them into the river, if they like that
+better than being shelled; or they can surrender, which they would
+prefer to either. And as to force, I'll bet we have one third more."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel, an impressive, fine-looking man, six feet clear in his
+socks, of thirty-eight or thereabouts, delivered the above with more
+than his usual earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>The Adjutant, of old Berks by birth, rather short in stature, thick-set,
+with a mathematically developed head, was the first to rejoin.</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be for want of ammunition, Colonel! This corps has plenty. An
+officer in a corps engaged yesterday told me that they had enough, and
+you all saw the hundreds of loaded ammunition wagons that we passed in
+the road close at hand&mdash;and besides, what excuse can there be? The Rebs
+I understand did not get much available ammunition at the ferry. They
+are far from their base of supplies, while we are scant fifteen miles
+from one railroad, and twenty-eight from another, and good roads to
+both."</p>
+
+<p>"Be easy," said the Major, a fine specimen of manhood, six feet two and
+a half clear of his boots, an Irishman by birth, the brogue, however, if
+he ever had any, lost by an early residence in this country. "Be easy.
+Little Mac is a safe commander. We tried him, Colonel, in the Peninsula,
+and I'll wager my pay and allowances, and God knows I need them, that
+he'll have his army safe."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and the Rebel army too," snappishly interrupted the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 24 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p><p>"I have always thought," said the Lieut.-Col., "that the test of a great
+commander was his ability to follow up and take advantage of a victory.
+One thousand men from the ranks would bear that test triumphantly
+to-day. It is a wonder that our Union men stiffened in yesterday's
+fight, whose blue jackets we can see from yonder summit in the rear of
+our sharpshooters, do not rise from the dead, and curse the halting
+imbecility that is making their heroic struggles, and glorious deaths,
+seemingly vain sacrifices."</p>
+
+<p>"Too hard, Colonel, too hard," says the Major.</p>
+
+<p>"Too hard! when results are developing before our eyes, so that every
+servant, even, in the regiment can read them. Mark my word for it,
+Major; Lee commenced crossing last evening, and by the time we creep to
+the river at five hundred yards a day, if at all, indeed, he will have
+his army over, horse, foot, and dragoons, and leave us the muskets on
+the field, the dead to bury, farm-houses full of Rebel wounded to take
+care of, and the battle-ground to encamp upon&mdash;a victory barely worth
+the cost. Why not advance, as the Col. says. The worst they can do in
+any event is to put us upon the defensive, and they can't drive us from
+this ground."</p>
+
+<p>"If old Rosecranz was only here," sang out a Captain, who had been
+itching for his say, and who had seen service in Western Virginia, "he
+wouldn't let them pull their pantaloons and shirts off and swim across,
+or wade it as if they were going out a bobbing for eels. When I was in
+Western Virginia&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If fighting old Joe Hooker could only take his saddle to-day," chimed
+in an enthusiastic company officer, completely cutting off the Captain,
+"he'd go in on his own hook."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 25 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p><p>"And it would be," sang out a beardless and thoughtless Lieutenant&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Old Joe, kicking up ahind and afore<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And the Butternuts a caving in, around old Joe."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The apt old song might have given the Lieutenant a little credit at any
+other time, but the matter in hand was too provokingly serious. Coffee
+and crackers were announced, the field officers commenced their meal in
+silence, and the company officers returned to their respective quarters.</p>
+
+<p>The troops rested on their arms all that afternoon, at times lounging
+close to the stacks. Upon the face of every reflecting officer and
+private, deep mortification was depicted. It did not compare, however,
+with the chagrin manifested by the Volunteer Regiments who had been
+engaged in the fight, and whose thinned ranks and comrades lost made
+them closely calculate consequences. Not last among the reflecting class
+was our little Irish corporal.</p>
+
+<p>"Gineral," said he, advancing cap in hand, to our always accessible
+Brigadier, as he sat leisurely upon his bay&mdash;"Gineral! will you permit a
+corporal, and an Irishman at that, to spake a word to ye?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, corporal!" the fine open countenance of the General relaxing
+into a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Gineral! didn't we beat the Rebs yesterday?"</p>
+
+<p>"So they say, corporal."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't the river surround them, and can they cross at more than one
+place, and that a bad one, as an ould woman whose pig I saved to-day
+tould me?"</p>
+
+<p>"The river is on their three sides, and they have only one ford, and
+that a bad one, corporal."</p>
+
+<p>"Thin why the Divil don't we charge?"</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 26 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p><p>"Corporal!" said the General, laughing, "I am not in command of the
+army, and can't say."</p>
+
+<p>"Bad luck to our stars that ye aren't, Gineral! there would be somebody
+hurt to-day thin, and it would be the bluidy Butthernuts, I'm thinking."
+The corporal gave this ready compliment as only an Irishman can, and
+withdrew.</p>
+
+<p>At dusk orders were received for the men to sleep by their arms. But
+there was no sleep to many an eye until a late hour that night. Never
+while life lasts will survivors forget the exciting conversations of
+that day and night. "Tired nature," however, claimed her dues, and one
+by one, officers and privates at late hours betook themselves to their
+blankets. The stars, undisturbed by struggles on this little planet,
+were gazed at by many a wakeful eye. Those same stars will look down as
+placidly upon the future faithful historian, whose duty it will be to
+place first in the list of cold, costly military mistakes, the blunder
+of the day after the battle of Antietam.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 27 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The March to the River&mdash;Our Citizen Soldiery&mdash;Popularity of Commanders
+how Lost and how Won&mdash;The Rebel Dead&mdash;How the Rebels repay Courtesy.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>An early call to arms was sounded upon the succeeding morning, and the
+Division rapidly formed. The batteries that had been posted at
+commanding points upon the series of ridges during the previous day and
+night were withdrawn, and the whole Corps moved along a narrow road,
+that wound beautifully among the ridges.</p>
+
+<p>The Volunteer Regiments were unusually quiet; the thoughts of the night
+previous evidently lingered with them. The American Volunteer is no mere
+machine. Rigorous discipline will give him soldierly
+characteristics&mdash;teach him that unity of action with his comrades and
+implicit obedience of orders are essential to success. But his
+independence of thought remains; he never forgets that he is a citizen
+soldier; he reads and reflects for himself. Few observant officers of
+volunteers but have noticed that affairs of national polity, movements
+of military commanders, are not unfrequently discussed by men in
+blouses, about camp fires and picket stations, with as much practical
+ability and certainly quite as courteously, as in halls where
+legislators canvass them at a nation's <!-- Page 28 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>cost. It has been justly
+remarked that in no army in the world is the average standard of
+intelligence so high, as in the American volunteer force. The same
+observation might be extended to earnestness of purpose and honesty of
+intention. The doctrine has long since been exploded that scoundrels
+make the best soldiers. Men of no character under discipline will fight,
+but they fight mechanically. The determination so necessary to success
+is wanting. European serfs trained with the precision of puppets, and
+like puppets unthinking, are wanting in the dash that characterizes our
+volunteers. That creature of impulse the Frenchman, under all that is
+left of the first Napoleon, the shadow of a mighty name, will charge
+with desperation, but fails in the cool and quiet courage so essential
+in seeming forlorn resistance. In what other nation can you combine the
+elements of the American volunteer? It may be said that the British
+Volunteer Rifle Corps would prove a force of similar character. In many
+respects undoubtedly they would; as yet there is no basis of comparison.
+Their soldierly attainments have not been tested by the realities of
+war.</p>
+
+<p>There was ample food for reflection. On the neighboring hills heavy
+details of soldiers were gathering the rebel dead in piles preparatory
+to committing them to the trenches, at which details equally heavy,
+vigorously plied the pick and spade. Our own dead, with few exceptions,
+had already been buried; and the long rows of graves marked by head and
+foot boards, placed by the kind hands of comrades, attested but too
+sadly how heavily we had peopled the ridges.</p>
+
+<p>While the troops were <i>en route</i>, the Commander-in-Chief in his hack and
+four, followed by a staff imposing in numbers, passed. The Regulars
+cheered vociferously. The applause from the Volunteers was <!-- Page 29 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>brief,
+faint, and a most uncertain sound, and yet many of these same Volunteer
+Regiments were rapturous in applause, previous to and during the battle.
+Attachment to Commanders so customary among old troops&mdash;so desirable in
+strengthening the morale of the army&mdash;cannot blind the intelligent
+soldier to a grave mistake&mdash;a mistake that makes individual effort
+contemptible. True, a great European Commander has said that soldiers
+will become attached to any General; a remark true of the times
+perhaps&mdash;true of the troops of that day,&mdash;but far from being true of
+volunteers, who are in the field from what they consider the necessity
+of the country, and whose souls are bent upon a speedy, honorable, and
+victorious termination of the war.</p>
+
+<p>A glance at the manner in which our Volunteer Regiments are most
+frequently formed, will, perhaps, best illustrate this. A town meeting
+is called, speeches made appealing to the patriotic, to respond to the
+necessities of the country; lists opened and the names of mechanics,
+young attorneys, clerks, merchants, farmers' sons, dry-goods-men and
+their clerks, and others of different pursuits, follow each other in
+strange succession, but with like earnestness of purpose. An intelligent
+soldiery gathered in this way, will not let attachments to men blind
+them as to the effects of measures.</p>
+
+<p>About 10 <span class="smcap">a. m.</span>, our brigade was drawn up in line of battle on a ridge
+overlooking the well riddled little town of Sharpsburg. Arms were
+stacked, and privilege given many officers and men to examine the
+adjacent ground. A cornfield upon our right, along which upon the north
+side ran a narrow farm road, that long use had sunk to a level of two
+and in most places three feet, below the surface of the fields, had been
+<!-- Page 30 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>contested with unusual fierceness. Blue and grey lay literally with
+arms entwined as they fell in hand to hand contest. The fence rails had
+been piled upon the north side of the road, and in the rifle pit formed
+to their hand with this additional bulwark, they poured the most galling
+of fires with comparative impunity upon our troops advancing to the
+charge. A Union battery, however, came to the rescue, and an enfilading
+fire of but a few moments made havoc unparalleled. Along the whole line
+of rebel occupation, their bodies could have been walked upon, so
+closely did they lie. Pale-faced, finely featured boys of sixteen, their
+delicate hands showing no signs of toil, hurried by a misguided
+enthusiasm from fond friends and luxurious family firesides, contrasted
+strangely with the long black hair, lank looks of the Louisiana Tiger,
+or the rough, bloated, and bearded face of the Backwoodsman of Texas. A
+Brigadier, who looked like an honest, substantial planter, lay half over
+the rails, upon which he had doubtless stood encouraging his men, while
+lying half upon his body were two beardless boys, members of his staff,
+and not unlikely of his family. Perhaps all the male members of that
+family had been hurried at once from life by that single shell. The
+sight was sickening. Who, if privileged, would be willing to fix a limit
+to God's retributive justice upon the heads of the infamous, and in many
+instances cowardly originators of this Rebellion!</p>
+
+<p>Cavalry scouting parties brought back the word that the country to the
+river was clear of the rebels, and in accordance with what seemed to be
+the prevailing policy of the master-mind of the campaign, immediate
+orders to move were then issued. The troops marched through that village
+of hospitals,&mdash;Sharpsburg&mdash;and halted within a mile and a half of <!-- Page 31 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>the
+river, in the rear of a brick dwelling, which was then taken and
+subsequently used as the Head-Quarters of Major-General Fitz John
+Porter. A line of battle was again formed, arms stacked, and an order
+issued that the ground would be occupied during the night.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the march was again resumed by a road which wound around
+the horseshoe-shaped bend in the river. When approaching the river,
+firing was heard, apparently as if from the other side, and a short
+distance further details were observed carrying wounded men and ranging
+them comfortably around the many hay and straw stacks of the
+neighborhood. Inquiry revealed that a reconnoitring party, misled by the
+apparent quiet of the other side, had crossed, fallen into an ambuscade,
+and under the most galling of fires, artillery and musketry, kept up
+most unmercifully by the advancing rebels, who thus ungraciously repaid
+the courtesy shown them the day after Antietam&mdash;had been compelled to
+recross that most difficult ford. Our loss was frightful&mdash;one new and
+most promising regiment was almost entirely destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>The men thought of the dead earnestness of the rebels, and as they moved
+forward around the winding Potomac&mdash;deep, full of shelving, sunken
+rocks, from the dam a short distance above the ford, that formerly fed
+the mill owned by a once favorably known Congressman, A. R. Boteler, to
+where it was touched by our line&mdash;they reviewed with redoubled force,
+the helplessness of the rebels a few days previously, and to say the
+least, the carelessness of the leader of the Union army.</p>
+
+<p>The regimental camp was selected in a fine little valley that narrowed
+into a gap between the bluffs, <!-- Page 32 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>bordering upon the canal, sheltered by
+wood, and having every convenience of water. The rebels had used it but
+a few days previously, and the necessity was immediate for heavy details
+for police duty. And here we passed quite unexpectedly six weeks of days
+more pleasant to the men than profitable to the country, and of which
+something may be said in our two succeeding chapters.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 33 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p><i>A Regimental Baker&mdash;Hot Pies&mdash;Position of the Baker in line of
+Battle&mdash;Troubles of the Baker&mdash;A Western Virginia Captain on a Whiskey
+Scent&mdash;The Baker's Story&mdash;How to obtain Political Influence&mdash;Dancing
+Attendance at Washington&mdash;What Simon says&mdash;Confiscation of Whiskey.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>Besides the indispensables of quartermaster and sutler the 210th had
+what might be considered a luxury in the shape of a baker, who had
+volunteered to accompany the regiment, and furnish hot cakes, bread, and
+pies. Tom Hudson was an original in his way, rather short of stature,
+far plumper and more savory-looking than one of his pies, with a
+pleasing countenance and twinkling black eye, that meant humor or
+roguishness as circumstances might demand, and a never-ending supply of
+what is always popular, dry humor. He was just the man to manage the
+thousand caprices of appetite of a thousand different men. While in
+camps accessible to the cities of Washington and Alexandria, matters
+moved smoothly enough. His zinc-plated bakery was always kept fired up,
+and a constant supply of hot pies dealt out to the long strings of men,
+who would stand for hours anxiously awaiting their turn. A movement of
+the baker's interpreted differently by himself and the men, at one time
+created considerable talk and no little feeling. <!-- Page 34 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>On several occasions
+the trays were lifted out of the oven, and the pies dashed upon the
+out-spread expectant hands, with such force as to break the too often
+half-baked undercrust. In consequence the juices would ooze out, trickle
+scalding hot between the fingers, and compel the helpless man to drop
+the pie. One unfortunate fellow lost four pies in succession. As they
+cost fifteen cents apiece, the pocket was too much interested to let the
+matter escape notice. A non-commissioned officer, who had lost a pie,
+savagely returned to the stand, and demanded another pie or his money.
+The baker was much too shrewd for that. The precedent, if set, would
+well nigh exhaust his stock of pies, and impoverish his cash drawer.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," said the officer, turning to the men, "it is a trick. He wants
+to sell as many pies as he can. He knows well enough that when one falls
+in this mud fifteen cents are gone slap."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, boys," said the baker blandly, "you know me better than that. I'd
+scorn to do an act of that kind for fifteen cents. You know how it
+is&mdash;what a rush there always is here. You want the pies as soon as
+baked, and baking makes them hot. Now I want to accommodate you all as
+soon as possible, and of course I serve them out as soon as baked. You
+had better all get tin-plates or boards."</p>
+
+<p>"That won't go down, old fellow," retorted the officer. "You know that
+there is hardly a tin-plate in camp, and boards are not to be had."</p>
+
+<p>A wink from the baker took the officer to the private passage in the
+rear of his tent. What happened there is known but to the two, but ever
+after the officer held his peace. Not so with the men. However, as the
+pies were not dealt out as hot in future, the matter gradually passed
+from their minds.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 35 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p><p>To make himself popular with the men, Tom resorted to a variety of
+expedients, one of which was to assure them that in case of an
+enterprise that promised danger, he would be with them. He was taken up
+quite unexpectedly. An ammunition train on the morning of the second
+battle of Bull Run, bound to the field, required a convoy. The regiment
+was detailed. Tom's assertions had come to the ears of the regimental
+officers, and without being consulted, he was provided with a horse, and
+told to keep near the Adjutant. There was a drizzling rain all day long,
+but through it came continually the booming of heavy ordnance.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel! how far do you suppose that firing is?" "And are they Rebel
+cannon?" were frequent inquiries made by Tom during the day. About noon
+he asserted that he could positively ride no further. But ride he must
+and ride he did. The Regiment halted near Centreville, having passed
+Porter's Corps on the way and convoyed the Train to the required point.
+After a short halt the homeward route was taken and Tom placed in the
+rear. By some accident, frequent when trains take up the road, he became
+separated from the Regiment and lost among the teams. The Regiment moved
+on, and as it was now growing dark, turned into a wood about half a mile
+distant, for the night. Tom had just learned his route, when "ping!"
+came a shell from a Rebel battery on a hill to the left, exploded among
+some team horses, and created awful confusion. He suddenly forgot his
+soreness, and putting spurs to his horse at a John Gilpin speed, rode
+by, through and over, as he afterwards said, the teams. The shells flew
+rapidly. Tom dodged as if every one was scorching his hair, at the same
+time giving a vigorous kick to the rear with <!-- Page 36 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>both heels. At his speed
+he was soon by the teams; in fact did not stop until he was ten Virginia
+miles from that scene of terror. But we will meet him again in the
+morning.</p>
+
+<p>The Regiment was soon shelled out of the wood, and compelled to continue
+its march. Three miles further they encamped in a meadow, passed a wet
+night without shelter, and early next morning were again upon the road.
+Thousands of stragglers lined the way, living upon rations plundered
+from broken-down baggage wagons&mdash;lounging lazily around fires that were
+kept in good glow by rails from the fences near which they were built.
+The preceding day these stragglers and skulkers were met in squads at
+every step of the road. At a point sufficiently remote from danger,
+their camps commenced. In one of these camps, situated in a fence
+corner, the baker was espied, stretched at full length and fast asleep,
+upon two rails placed at a gentle slope at right angles to the fence.
+Surrounding him were filthy, mean-looking representatives of
+half-a-dozen various regiments&mdash;the Zouave more gay than gallant in
+flaming red breeches&mdash;blouses, dress coats, and even a pair of shoulder
+straps, assisted to complete the crowd. Near by was tied his jaded
+horse.</p>
+
+<p>The baker was awakened. To his surprise, as he said, he saw the
+regiment, as he had supposed them to be much nearer home than himself.
+One of his graceless comrades, however, bluntly contradicted this, and
+accused him of being mortally frightened when he halted the night
+before, as although they assured him that he was full ten miles from
+danger, he insisted that these rifled guns had terribly long range. The
+baker remonstrated, and quietly resumed his place by the Adjutant and
+Colonel.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 37 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p><p>"I have been thinking, Colonel," said he, in the course of a half hour,
+riding alongside of the Colonel, and speaking in an undertone, "that I
+ran a great risk unnecessarily."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" asked the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"You see my exhortations are worth far more to the men than my example.
+When they crowd my quarters, as they do every morning, I never fail to
+deal out patriotic precepts with my pies."</p>
+
+<p>"But particularly the pies," retorted the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"That is another branch of my case," slily continued the baker.
+"Suppose, if such a calamity can be dwelt upon, that I had been killed,
+and there was only one mule between me and death, who would have run my
+bakery? who," elevating his voice, "would have furnished hot rolls for
+the officers, and warm bread cakes and pies for the men? Riding along
+last night, these matters were all duly reflected upon, and I wound up,
+by deciding that the regiment could not afford to lose me."</p>
+
+<p>"But you managed to lose the regiment," replied the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Pure accident that, I assure you, upon honor. Now in line of battle I
+have taken pains to ascertain my true position, but this confounded
+marching by the flank puts me out of sorts. In line of battle the
+quartermaster says he is four miles in the rear&mdash;the sutler says that he
+is four miles behind the quartermaster, and as it would look singular
+upon paper to shorten the distance for the baker, besides other good
+reasons, I suppose I am four miles behind the sutler."</p>
+
+<p>"Completely out of range for all purposes," observed the Adjutant, who
+had slily listened with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a good reason for that position, it is well <!-- Page 38 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>chosen, and shows
+foresight," continued the baker, dropping his rein, and enforcing his
+remarks by apt gestures. "Suppose we are in line of battle, and the
+Rebels in line facing us at easy rifle range. Their prisoners say that
+they have lived for a month past on roasted corn and green apples. Now
+what will equal the daring of a hungry man! These Rebel Commanders are
+shrewd in keeping their men hungry; our men have heart for the fight, it
+is true, but the rebels have a stomach for it&mdash;they hunger for a chance
+at the spoils. The quartermaster then with his crackers, as they must
+not be needlessly inflamed, must be kept out of sight&mdash;the sutler, too,
+with his stores, must be kept shady&mdash;but above all the baker. Suppose
+the baker to be nearer," said he, with increased earnestness, "and a
+breeze should spring up towards their lines bearing with it the smell of
+warm bread, the rebels would rise instanter on tip-toe, snuff a
+minute&mdash;concentrate on the bakery, and no two ranks or columns doubled
+on the centre, could keep the hungry devils back. Our line pierced, we
+might lose the day&mdash;lose the day, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And the baker," said the Major, joining in the laugh caused by his
+argument.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after that march, matters went indifferently with the baker.
+Camp was changed frequently, and over the rough roads he kept up with
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>A week after the battle of Antietam, after satisfying himself fully of
+the departure of the Rebels, he arrived in camp. He had picked up by the
+way an ill-favored assistant, whose tent stood on the hill side some
+little distance from the right flank of the regiment.</p>
+
+<p>Two nights after his arrival there was a commotion in camp. A tonguey
+corporal, slightly under regulation <!-- Page 39 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>size, in an exuberance of spirits,
+had mounted a cracker-box almost immediately in front of the sutler's
+tent, and commenced a lively harangue. He told how he had left a
+profitable grocery business to serve his country&mdash;his pecuniary
+sacrifices&mdash;but above all, the family he had left behind.</p>
+
+<p>"And you've blissed them by taking your characther with you," chimed in
+the little Irish corporal.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you steal your whiskey?" demanded a second.</p>
+
+<p>The confusion increased, the crowd was dispersed by the guard, all at
+the expense of the sutler's credit, as it was rumored that he had
+furnished the stimulant.</p>
+
+<p>The sutler indignantly demanded an investigation, and three officers,
+presumed to possess a scent for whiskey above their fellows, were
+detailed for the duty. One of these was our friend the Virginia captain.</p>
+
+<p>Under penalty of losing his stripes, the corporal confessed that he had
+obtained the liquor at the baker's. Thither the following evening the
+detail repaired. The assistant denied all knowledge of the liquor. He
+was confronted with the corporal, and admitted the charge, and that but
+three bottles remained.</p>
+
+<p>"By &mdash;&mdash;," said our Western Virginia captain, hands in pocket, "I smell
+ten more. There are just thirteen bottles or I'll lose my straps."</p>
+
+<p>The confidence of the captain impressed the detail, and they went to
+work with a will&mdash;emptying barrels of crackers, probing with a bayonet
+sacks of flour, etc. A short search, to the pretended amazement of the
+assistant, proved the correctness of the captain's scent. The baker was
+sent for, and with <!-- Page 40 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>indignant manner and hands lifted in holy horror, he
+poured volley after volley of invective at the confounded assistant.</p>
+
+<p>"But, gentlemen," said the baker, dropping his tone, "I've known worse
+things than this to happen. I've known even bakers to get tight."</p>
+
+<p>"And your bacon would have stood a better chance of being saved if you
+had got tight, instead of putting a non-commissioned officer in that
+condition," said one of the detail. "The Colonel, I am afraid, Tom, will
+clear you out."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," sighed the baker, after a pause of a moment, "talk about Job and
+all the other unfortunates since his day, why not one of them had my
+variety of suffering. Did you ever hear any of my misfortunes?"</p>
+
+<p>"We see one."</p>
+
+<p>"My life has been a series of mishaps. I prosper occasionally in small
+things, but totals knock me. God help me if I hadn't a sure port in a
+storm&mdash;a self-supporting wife. For instance&mdash;but I can't commence that
+story without relieving my thirst." A bottle was opened, drinks had all
+around, and the baker continued&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You see, gentlemen, when Simon was in political power, I waggled
+successfully and extensively among the coal mines in Central
+Pennsylvania. In those localities voters are kept underground until
+election day, and they then appear above often in such unexpected force
+as to knock the speculations of unsophisticated politicians. But Simon
+was not one of that stripe. He knew his men&mdash;the real men of influence;
+not men that have big reputations created by active but less widely
+known under-workers, but the under-workers themselves. Simon dealt with
+these, and he <!-- Page 41 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>rarely mistook his men. Now I was well known in those
+parts&mdash;kept on the right side of the boys, and the boys tried to keep on
+the right side of me, and Simon knew it. No red tape fettered Simon, as
+the boys say it tied our generals the other side of Sharpsburg in order
+to let the Rebs have time to cross. If the measures that his shrewd
+foresight saw were necessary for the suppression of this Rebellion, at
+its outbreak, had been adopted, we would be encamped somewhat lower down
+in Dixie than the Upper Potomac&mdash;if indeed there would be any necessity
+for our being in service at all.</p>
+
+<p>"He was not a man of old tracks, like a ground mole; indeed like some
+military commanders who seem lost outside of them; but of ready
+resources and direct routes, gathering influence now by one means and
+then by another, and perhaps both novel. Now Simon set me at work in
+this wise.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tom,' one morning, says an old and respected citizen of our place, who
+knew my father and my father's father, and me as an unlucky dog from my
+cradle, 'Tom, did ever any idea of getting a permanent and profitable
+position&mdash;say, as you are an excellent penman&mdash;as clerk in one of the
+departments at Harrisburg or Washington, enter your head?'</p>
+
+<p>"At this I straightened up, drew up my shirt collar, pulled down my
+vest, and said with a sort of hopeful inquiry, 'Why should there?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tom, you are wasting your most available talent. Do you know that you
+have influence&mdash;and political influence at that?'</p>
+
+<p>"Another hitch at my shirt collar and pull at my vest, as visions of the
+Brick Capitol at Harrisburg and the White one at Washington danced
+before my eyes.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 42 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p><p>"'Did you ever reflect, Tom, upon the source of political power?'
+continued the old gentleman, and without waiting for an answer,
+fortunately, as I was fast becoming dumbfoundered, 'the people, Tom, the
+people; not you and I, so much as that miner,' said he, pointing to a
+rough ugly-looking fellow that I had kicked out of my wife's
+bar-room&mdash;or, rather, got my ostler to do it&mdash;two nights before, 'That
+man, Tom, is a representative of thousands; we may represent but
+ourselves. Now these people are controlled. They neither think nor act
+for themselves, as a general rule; somebody does that for them. Now,' as
+he spoke, trying to take me by a pulled-out button-hole, 'you might as
+well be that somebody as any man I know.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Lord bless you, Mr. Simpson, I can't do my own thinking, and as
+to acting, my wife says I am acting the fool all day long.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tom, you don't comprehend me, you know our county sends three members
+to the State Legislature, and that they elect a United States Senator.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, now, our county can send Simon C&mdash;&mdash; to the United States
+Senate.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But our county oughtn't to do it,'&mdash;my whig prejudices that I had
+imbibed with my mother's milk coming up strong.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tut, tut, Tom, didn't I stand shoulder to shoulder with your father in
+the old Clay Legion? Whiggery has had its day, and Henry Clay would
+stand with us now.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But with Simon's?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, Simon's principles have undergone a wholesome change.'</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't see it, but didn't like to contradict the old man, and he
+continued.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 43 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p><p>"'Now, Thomas, be a man; you have influence. I know you have it.' Here I
+straightened up again. 'Just look at the miners who frequent your hotel,
+each of them has influence, and don't you think that you could control
+their votes? Should you succeed, Simon's Scotch blood will never let him
+forget a friend.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Or forgive an enemy,' I added.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tom, don't let your foolish prejudices stand in the way of your
+success. Your father would advise as I do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. S., I'll try.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's the word, Tom,' said the old man, patting me on the shoulder.
+'It runs our steam-engines, builds our factories, in short, has made our
+country what it is.'</p>
+
+<p>"I took Mr. S.'s hand, thanked him for his suggestions, with an effort
+swallowed my prejudices against the old Chieftain, and resolved to work
+as became my new idea of my position.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, the recollection of that effort to swallow makes my throat
+dry, and it's a long time between drinks."</p>
+
+<p>Another round at the bottle, and Tom resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, work I did, like a beaver; there wasn't a miner in my
+neighborhood that I didn't treat, and a miner's baby that I didn't kiss,
+and often their wives, as some unprincipled scoundrel one day told Mrs.
+Hudson, to the great injury of my ears and shins for almost a week, and
+the upshot of the business was, that my township turned a political
+somerset. Friends of Simon's, in disguise, went to Harrisburg, were
+successful, and I was not among the last to congratulate him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Hudson,' said the Prince of politicians, 'how can I repay you for
+your services?'</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 44 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p><p>"Like a fool, as my wife always told me I was, I made no suggestion, but
+let the remark pass with the tameness of a sheep&mdash;merely muttering that
+it was a pleasure to serve him. Simon went to Washington&mdash;made no
+striking hits on the floor, but was great on committees.</p>
+
+<p>"Another idea entered my noddle, this clip without the aid of Mr. S. My
+penmanship came into play. Days and nights of most laborious work
+produced a full length portrait of Simon, that at the distance of ten
+feet could not be distinguished from a fine engraving. I seized my
+opportunity, found Simon in cozy quarters opposite Willard's, and
+presented it in person. He was delighted&mdash;his daughter was delighted&mdash;a
+full-faced heavily bearded Congressman present was delighted, and after
+repeated assurances of 'thine to serve,' on the part of the Senator, I
+crossed to my hotel&mdash;not Willard's&mdash;hadn't as yet sufficient elevation
+of person and depth of purse for that,&mdash;but an humbler one in a back
+street. Next day I saw my handiwork in the Rotunda&mdash;the admiration of
+all but a black long-haired puppy, an M. C. and F. F. V., as I
+afterwards learned, who said to a lady at his elbow who had admired it,
+'Practice makes some of the poor clerks at the North tolerably good
+pensmen.' I could have kicked him, but thought it might interfere with
+the little matter in hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tom,' said the senatorial star of my hopes one day, when my purse had
+become as lean as a June shad, 'Tom, there is a place of $800 a year, I
+have in view. A Senator is interfering, but I think it can be managed.
+You must have patience, these things take time. I will write to you as
+early as any definite result is attained.'</p>
+
+<p>"Relying on Simon's management, which in his own <!-- Page 45 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>case had never failed,
+next morning saw me in the cars with light heart and lighter purse,
+bound for home and Mrs. H., who I am always proud to think regretted my
+absence more than my presence, although she would not admit it.</p>
+
+<p>"Days passed; months passed; my wife reproached me with lost time&mdash;my
+picture was gone; I had not heard from Simon; I ventured to write; next
+mail brought a letter rich in indefinite promises.</p>
+
+<p>"Years passed, and Simon was Secretary of War at a time when the office
+had influence, position, and patronage, unequalled in its previous
+history. 'Now is your time, Tom,' something within whispered&mdash;not
+conscience&mdash;for that did not seem to favor my connection with Simon.</p>
+
+<p>"I wrote again. Quarter-Masters, Clerks by the thousands, Paymasters&mdash;I
+was always remarkably ready in disposing of funds&mdash;and Heaven only knows
+what not were wanted in alarming numbers. Active service was proposed by
+Simon; but you know, gentlemen, I am constitutionally disqualified for
+that. And after tediously waiting months longer, I succeeded without
+Simon's aid in obtaining my present honorable but unfortunate position.</p>
+
+<p>"And that reminds me of the whiskey, another round, men." It was taken;
+Tom's idea was to drink the detail into forgetfulness of their errand.
+But he missed his men. He might as well have tried to lessen a sponge by
+soaking it. The Virginia Captain announced that the Colonel had ordered
+them to confiscate the whiskey for the use of the Hospital, and to the
+Surgeon's quarters the detail must next proceed. The Captain gathered up
+the bottles. The detail bowed themselves out of the tent, and poor <!-- Page 46 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>Tom
+thought his misfortunes crowned, as he saw them leave laboring under a
+load of liquor inside and out. At the Surgeon's tent we will again see
+them.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 47 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Scene at the Surgeon's Quarters&mdash;Our Little Dutch Doctor&mdash;Incidents
+of his Practice.&mdash;His Messmate the Chaplain&mdash;The Western Virginia
+Captain's account of a Western Virginia Chaplain&mdash;His Solitary oath&mdash;How
+he Preached, how he Prayed, and how he Bush-whacked&mdash;His revenge of
+Snowden's death&mdash;How the little Dutch doctor applied the Captain's
+Story.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>Taps had already been sounded before the detail arrived at the Surgeon's
+tent. The only Surgeon present had retired to his blankets. Aroused by
+the blustering, he soon lit a candle, and sticking the camp candlestick
+into the ground, invited them in.</p>
+
+<p>And here we must introduce the Assistant-Surgeon, or rather the little
+Dutch Doctor as he was familiarly called by the men. Considering his
+character and early connexion with the regiment, we are at fault in not
+giving him an earlier place in these pages.</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor was about five feet two in height, hardly less in
+circumference about the waist, of an active habit of body and turn of
+mind, eyes that winked rapidly when he was excited, and a movable scalp
+which threw his forehead into multiform wrinkles as cogitations beneath
+it might demand. A Tyrolese by birth, he was fond of his Father-land,
+its mountain songs, and the customs of its people. Topics kindred <!-- Page 48 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>to
+these were an unfailing fund of conversation with him. Thoroughly
+educated, his conversation in badly-broken English, for he made little
+progress in acquiring the language, at once amused and instructed. Among
+his fellow surgeons and officers of his acquaintance, he ranked high as
+a skilful surgeon on account of superior attainments, acquired partly
+through the German Universities and partly in the Austrian service,
+during the campaign of Magenta, Solferino, and the siege of Mantua. With
+a German's fondness for music, he beguiled the tedium of many a long
+winter evening. With his German education he had imbibed radicalism to
+its full extent. Thoroughly conversant with the Sacred Scriptures he was
+a doubter, if not a positive unbeliever, from the Pentateuch to
+Revelation. In addition to this, his flings at the Chaplain, his
+messmate, made him unpopular with the religiously inclined of the
+regiment. He had besides, the stolidity of the German, and their cool
+calculating practicalism. This did not always please the men. They
+thought him unfeeling.</p>
+
+<p>"What for you shrug your shoulders?' said he on one occasion to a man
+from whose shoulders he was removing a large fly blister.</p>
+
+<p>"It hurts."</p>
+
+<p>"Bah, wait till I cuts your leg off&mdash;and you know what hurts."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, you sick man, here goot place," said he, addressing a man just
+taken to the hospital with fever, in charge of an orderly sergeant, at
+surgeon's call, "goot place, nice, warm, dead man shust left." Remarks
+such as these did not, of course, tend to increase the comfort of the
+men; they soon circulated among the regiment, were discussed in
+quarters, and as may be supposed greatly exaggerated, and all at the
+Doctor's <!-- Page 49 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>cost. But the Doctor pursued the even tenor of his way,
+entirely unmindful of them.</p>
+
+<p>About the time of which we write, a clever, honest man died of a disease
+always sudden in its termination, rheumatic attack upon the heart. The
+Doctor had informed him fully of his disease, and that but little could
+be done for it. The poor man, however, was punctual in attendance at
+Surgeon's Call, and insisted upon some kind of medicine. Bread pills
+were furnished. One morning, after great complaint of pain about the
+heart, and a few spasms, he died. His comrades, shocked, thought his
+death the effect of improper medicine. The Doctor's pride was touched.
+He insisted upon calling in other surgeons; the pills found in his
+pocket were analyzed, and discovered to be only bread. The corpse was
+opened, and the cause of death fully revealed. As the Doctor walked away
+in stately triumph, some of the men who had been boisterous against him,
+approached by way of excusing their conduct, and said that now they were
+perfectly satisfied. "What you know!" was his gruff reply, "you not know
+a man's heart from a pig's."</p>
+
+<p>Many like incidents might be told&mdash;but we must not leave these Captains
+standing too long at the door of the tent; with the production of the
+light in they came, with the remark that they had brought hospital
+supplies. In the meantime several officers, field and company, attracted
+by the noise and whiskey; came in from regimental head-quarters.</p>
+
+<p>"Must see if goot," and the Doctor applied the bottle to his lips; it
+was not a favorite drink of his, and tasted badly in lieu of Rhine wine
+or lager.</p>
+
+<p>"May be goot whiskey."</p>
+
+<p>"Let practical whiskey drinkers have a chance," said two or three at
+once, and the bottle went its round.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 50 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>The test was not considered satisfactory until another and another had
+been emptied.</p>
+
+<p>The increasing confusion aroused the Chaplain, who hitherto had been
+snugly ensconced beneath his blankets in the corner opposite the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Chaplain, your opinion, and don't let us hear anything about
+putting the bottle to your neighbor's lips," said a rough voice in the
+crowd. The Chaplain politely declined, with the remark that they
+appeared too anxious to put the bottle to their own lips to require any
+assistance from their neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>"Chaplain not spiritually minded," muttered the Doctor, "so far but
+three preaches, and every preach cost government much as sixty tollar."
+The calculation at the Chaplain's expense, amused the crowd, and annoyed
+the Chaplain, who resumed his blankets.</p>
+
+<p>"When I was in Western Virginny, under Rosecrans,"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The old start and good for a yarn," said an officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Good for facts," replied the Chief of the Detail.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Captain, we'll take it as fact," said the Adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>"We had a chaplain that was a chaplain in every sense of the word."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he drink and swear?" inquired a member of the Detail.</p>
+
+<p>"On long marches and in fights he had a canteen filled with what he
+called chaplain's cordial, about one part whiskey and three water. I
+tasted it, but with little comfort. One day, a member of Rosy's staff
+seeing him pulling at it, asked for it, and after a strong pull, told
+the chaplain that he was weak in spiritual things. 'Blessed are the poor
+in spirit,' was the quick answer of the chaplain. As to swearing, he was
+never known to swear but once.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 51 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p><p>"I heard an officer tell the Adjutant a day or two ago, that what was
+considered the prettiest sentence in the English language, had been
+written by a smutty preacher. I don't recollect the words as he repeated
+it, but it was about an old officer, who nursed a young one, and some
+one told him the young one would die. The old officer excited, said, 'By
+G&mdash;d, he sha'nt die.' It goes on to say then that an Angel flew up to
+heaven, to enter it in the great Book of Accounts, and that the Angel
+who made the charge cried over it and blotted it out. That is the
+substance anyhow. Well, sir, if the Third Virginny's Chaplain's oath was
+ever recorded it is in the same fix."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, tell us about it, how it happened," exclaimed several.</p>
+
+<p>"Why you see, Rosy sent over one day for a Major who had lately come
+into the Division, and told him that 300 rebels were about six miles to
+our left, in the bushes along a creek, and that he should take 300 men,
+and kill, capture, or drive them off. The Major was about to make a
+statement. 'That's all, Major,' with a wave of his hand for him to
+leave, 'I expect a good account.'</p>
+
+<p>"That was Rosy's style: he told an officer what he wanted, and he
+supposed the officer had gumption enough to do it, without bothering
+him, as some of our red-tape or pigeon-hole Generals, as the boys call
+them, do with long written statements that a memory like a tarred stick
+couldn't remember&mdash;telling where these ten men must be posted, those
+twenty-five, and another thirty, etc. I wonder what such office Generals
+think&mdash;that the Rebels will be fools enough to attack us when we want
+them to, or take ground that we would like to have them make a stand
+on."</p>
+
+<p>"Captain, we talk enough ourselves about that; on with the story."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 52 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>"Well, four companies, seventy-five strong each, were detailed to go
+with him, and mine among the number, from our regiment. The chaplain got
+wind of it, and go he would. By the time the detail was ready, he had
+his bullets run, his powder-horn and fixin's on, and long Tom, as he
+called his Kentucky rifle, slung across his shoulder."</p>
+
+<p>"His canteen?" inquired an officer disposed to be a little troublesome.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't recollect about that," said the Captain, somewhat curtly.</p>
+
+<p>"On the march he mixed with the men, talked with them about all kinds of
+useful matters, and gave them a world of information.</p>
+
+<p>"We had got about a mile from where we supposed the Rebels were; my
+company, in advance as skirmishers, had just cleared a wood, and were
+ten yards in the open, when the Butternuts opened fire from a wood ahead
+at long rifle range. One man was slightly wounded. We placed him against
+a tree with his back to the Rebels, and under cover of the woods were
+deciding upon a plan of attack, when up gallops our fat Major with just
+breath enough to say, 'My God, what's to be done?'</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never forget the chaplain's look at that. He had unslung long Tom;
+holding it up in his right hand, he fairly yelled out, 'Fight, by G&mdash;d!
+Boys, follow me.' And we did follow him. Skirting around through
+underbrush to our left, concealed from the Rebs, we came to an open
+again of about thirty yards. The Rebs had retired about eighty yards in
+the wood to where it was thicker.</p>
+
+<p>"Out sprang the Chaplain, making a worm fence, Indian fashion, for a big
+chestnut. We followed in same style. My orderly was behind another
+chestnut <!-- Page 53 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>about ten feet to the Chaplain's left, and slightly to his
+rear. There was for a spell considerable random firing, but no one hurt,
+and the Rebs again retired a little. We soon saw what the Chaplain was
+after. About eighty-five yards in his front was another big chestnut,
+and behind it a Rebel officer. They blazed away at each other in fine
+style&mdash;both good shots, as you could tell by the bark being chipped, now
+just where the Chaplain's head was, and now just where the officer's
+was. The officer was left-handed. The Chaplain could fire right or left
+equally well. By a kind of instinct for fair play and no gouging that
+even the Rebs feel at times, the rest on both sides looked at that
+fight, and wouldn't mix. My orderly had several chances to bring the
+Rebel. Their rifles cracked in quick succession for quite a spell. The
+Chaplain, at last, not wanting an all-day affair of it, carefully again
+drew a bead on a level with the chip marks on the left of the Rebel
+tree. He had barely time to turn his head without deranging the aim,
+when a ball passed through the rim of his hat. As he turned his head, he
+gave a wink to the orderly, who was quick as lightning in taking a hint.
+A pause for nearly a minute. By and by the Rebel pokes his head out to
+see what was the matter. Seeing the gun only, and thinking the Chaplain
+would give him a chance when he'd take aim, he did not pull it in as
+quick as usual. My orderly winked,&mdash;a sharp crack, and the Rebel officer
+threw up his hands, dropped his rifle, and fell backward, with well nigh
+an ounce ball right over his left eye, through and through his head. Our
+men cheered for the Chaplain. The Rebs fired in reply, and rushed to
+secure the body. That cost them three more men, but they got their
+bodies, and fast as legs could carry them, cut to their fort about
+<!-- Page 54 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>three miles to their rear. We of course couldn't attack the fort, and
+returned to camp. The boys were loud in praise of the Chaplain. Their
+chin music, as they called camp rumors, had it that the officer killed
+was a Rebel chaplain. Old Rosy, when he heard of it, laughed, and swore
+like a trooper. I hear he has got over swearing now&mdash;but it couldn't
+have been until after he left Western Virginny. I heard our Chaplain say
+that he heard a brother chaplain say, and he believed him to be a
+Christian,&mdash;that he believed that the Apostle Paul himself would learn
+to swear inside of six months, if he entered the service in Western
+Virginny. Washington prayed at Trenton, and swore at Monmouth, and I
+don't believe that the War Department requires Chaplains to be better
+Christians than Washington. Our old Chaplain used to say that there were
+many things worse than swearing, and that he didn't believe that men
+often swore away their chances of heaven."</p>
+
+<p>"Comforting gospel for you, captain," said that troublesome officer.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a bully chaplain," continued the captain, becoming more
+animated, probably because the regimental chaplain, turtle-like, had
+again protruded his head from between the blankets. "He had no long
+tailed words or doctrines that nobody understood, that tire soldiers,
+because they don't understand them, and make them think that the
+chaplain is talking only to a few officers. That's what so often keeps
+men away from religious services. Our chaplain used to say that you
+could tell who Paul was talking to by his style of talk. I can't say how
+that is from my own reading; but I always heard that Paul was a sensible
+man, and if so he certainly would suit himself to the understanding of
+his crowd."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 55 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p><p>"Our old chaplain talked right at you. No mistake he meant
+you&mdash;downright, plain, practical, and earnest. He'd tell his crowd of
+backwoodsmen, flatboatmen and deck hands&mdash;the hardest customers that the
+gospel was ever preached to,&mdash;'That the war carried on by the Government
+was the most righteous of wars; they were doing God's service by
+fighting in it. On the part of the rebels it was the most unnatural and
+wicked of wars. They called it a second Revolutionary War, the
+scoundrels! When my father and your father, Tom Hulzman,' said he,
+addressing one of his hearers, 'fought in the Revolution, they fought
+against a tyrannical monarchy that was founded upon a landed
+aristocracy&mdash;that is, rich big feeling people, that owned very big
+farms. The Government stands in this war, if any thing, better than our
+fathers stood. We fight against what is far worse than a landed
+aristocracy, meaner in the sight of God and more hated by honest men,
+this accursed slave aristocracy, that will, if they whip us&mdash;(Can't do
+that, yell the crowd.) No, they can't. If they should, we would be no
+better than the poor whites that are permitted to live a dog's life on
+some worn-out corner of a nigger-owner's plantation. Would you have your
+children, Joe Dixon, insulted, made do the bidding of some long-haired
+lank mulatto nabob? (Never, says Joe.) Then, boys, look to your arms,
+fire low, and don't hang on the aim. We must fight this good fight out,
+and thank God we can do it. If we die, blessed will be our memory in the
+hearts of our children. If we live and go to our firesides
+battle-scarred, our boys can say, 'See how dad fought, and every scar in
+front,' and we'll be honored by a grateful people.' And he'd tell of the
+sufferings of their parents, wives, and children, if we didn't succeed,
+till the water courses on the dirty faces of his crowd would be as plain
+as his preaching.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 56 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p><p>"And pray! he'd pray with hands and eyes both open, in such a way that
+every one believed it would have immediate attention; that God would
+damn the Rebellion; and may be next day he'd have Long Tom doing its
+full share in hurrying the rebels themselves to damnation.</p>
+
+<p>"And kind hearted! why old Tim Larkins, who had a wound on the shin that
+wouldn't heal, told me with tears in his eyes that he had been mother,
+wife, and child to him. He went about doing good.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I recollect," and the Captain's eye glistened as he spoke, "how
+he acted when young Snowden was wounded. Snowden was a slender,
+pale-faced stripling of sixteen, beloved by every body that knew him,
+and if ever a perfect Christian walked this earth, he was one, even if
+he was in service in Western Virginny. The chaplain was fond of company,
+and, as was his duty, mixed with the men. Snowden was reserved, much by
+himself, and had little or no chance to learn bad habits; that is the
+only way I can account for his goodness. I often heard the chaplain tell
+the boys to imitate Snowden, and not himself; 'you'll find a pure mouth
+there, boys, because the heart is pure; you'll see no letters of
+introduction to the devil,' as the chaplain called cards, 'in his
+knapsack.' By the way, he was so hard on cards, that even the boatmen,
+who knew them better than their A B C's, were ashamed to play them. He
+would say, 'Snowden is brave as man can be; he has a right to be, he is
+prepared for every fate. A christian, boys, makes all the better soldier
+for his being a Christian,' and he would tell us of Washington, Col.
+Gardner, that preacher that suffered, fought and died near Elizabeth, in
+the Jerseys, and others.</p>
+
+<p>"In bravery, none excelled Snowden. We were <!-- Page 57 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>lying down once, but about
+sixty yards from a wood chuck full of rebels, when word was sent that
+our troops on the left must be signalled, to charge in a certain way.
+Several understood the signs, but Snowden first rose, mounted a stump,
+and did not get off although receiving flesh wounds in half-a-dozen
+different places, and his clothing cut to ribands, until he saw the
+troops moving as directed. How we gritted our teeth as we heard the
+bullets whiz by that brave boy. I have the feeling yet. We thought his
+goodness saved him. His was goodness! Not that kind that will stare a
+preacher full in the face from a cushioned pew on Sunday, and gouge you
+over the counter on Monday, but the genuine article. His time was yet to
+come.</p>
+
+<p>"One day we had driven the rebels through a rough country some miles,
+skirmishing with their rear-guard; the Chaplain and Snowden with my
+company foremost. We neared a small but deep creek the rebels had
+crossed, and trying to get across, we were scattered along the bank. I
+heard a shot, and as I turned I saw poor Snowden fall, first on his knee
+and then on his elbow. I called the Chaplain. They were messmates&mdash;he
+loved Snowden as his own child, and always called him 'my boy.' He
+rushed to him, 'My boy, who fired that shot?' The lad turned to a clump
+of bushes about 80 yards distant on the other side of the creek. Long
+Tom was in hand, but the rebel was first, and a ball cut the Chaplain's
+coat collar. The flash revealed him; in an instant long Tom was in
+range, and another instant saw a Butternut belly face the sun. Dropping
+his piece, falling upon his knee, he raised Snowden gently up with his
+left hand. 'I am dying,' whispered the boy, 'tell my mother I'll meet
+her in heaven.' The Chaplain raised <!-- Page 58 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>his right hand, his eyes swimming
+in tears, and in tones that I'll never forget, and that make me a better
+man every time I think of them, he said, 'O God, the pure in heart is
+before thee, redeem thy promise, and reveal thyself.' A slight gurgle,
+and with a pleasant smile playing upon his countenance, the soul of John
+Snowden, if there be justice in heaven, went straight up to the God who
+gave it." Tears had come to the Captain's eyes, and were glistening in
+the eyes of most of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The Dutch doctor alone was unmoved. Stoically he remarked, "Very goot
+story, Captain, goot story, do our Chaplain much goot."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd left quietly&mdash;all but the Captain, who, never forgetting
+business in the hurry of the moment, drew a receipt for the transfer of
+thirteen bottles of whiskey to the hospital department, which the doctor
+signed without reading.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 59 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p><i>A Day at Division Head-Quarters&mdash;The Judge Advocate&mdash;The tweedle-dum
+and tweedle-dee of Red-Tape as understood by Pigeon-hole
+Generals&mdash;Red-tape Reveries&mdash;French Authorities on Pigeon-hole
+Investigations&mdash;An Obstreperous Court and Pigeon-hole
+Strictures&mdash;Disgusting Head-Quarter Profanity.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>"The General commanding Division desires to see Lieutenant Colonel &mdash;&mdash;,
+210th Regiment, P. V., Judge Advocate, immediately," were words that met
+the eye of the latter officer, as he unfolded a note handed him by an
+orderly. It was about nine in the forenoon of a fine day in October.
+Buckling on his sword, and ordering his horse, he rode at a lively
+canter to the General's Head-Quarters.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel," said the General, pulling vigorously at the same time at the
+left side of his moustache, as if anxious that his teeth should take
+hold of it, "I have sent for you in regard to this Record. Do you know,
+sir, that this Record has given me a d&mdash;&mdash;d sight of trouble; why, sir,
+I consulted authorities the greater part of last night, French and
+American."</p>
+
+<p>"In regard to what point, General?"</p>
+
+<p>"In regard to what point? In regard to all the points, sir. There, sir,
+is the copy made of that order detailing the Court. It reads, 'Detailed
+for the Court,' whereas it should be 'Detail for the Court.' <!-- Page 60 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>My mind is
+not made up fully as to whether the variance vitiates the Record or not.
+The authorities appear to be silent upon that point. To say the least,
+it is d&mdash;&mdash;d awkward."</p>
+
+<p>"General, the copy is a faithful one of the order issued from your
+Head-Quarters."</p>
+
+<p>"From my Head-Quarters, sir? By G&mdash;d, Colonel, that can't be. If I have
+been particular, and have prided myself upon any one thing, it has been
+upon having papers drawn strictly according to the Regulations. And I
+have tried to impress it upon my clerks. That infernal blunder made at
+my Head-Quarters! I'll soon see how that is." And the General, Record in
+hand, took long strides, for a little man, towards the Adjutant's tent.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain," said he, addressing an officer who was best known in the
+Division as a relative of a leading commander, and whose only claim to
+merit&mdash;in fact, it had to counterbalance many habits positively
+bad&mdash;consisted of his reposing under the shadow of a mighty name, "where
+is the original order detailing this Court?" "Here, General," said a
+clerk, producing the paper. The General's eye rested for a moment upon
+it, then throwing it upon the table, he burst out passionately:
+"Captain, this is too G&mdash;d d&mdash;n bad after all my care and trouble in
+giving you full instructions. Is it possible that the simplest order
+can't be made out without my supervision, as if, by G&mdash;d, it was my
+business to stand over your desks all day long, see every paper folded,
+endorsement made, and the right pigeon-hole selected? This won't do. I
+give full instructions, and expect them carried out. By G&mdash;d," continued
+the General, striding vehemently across to his marquee, "they must be
+carried out."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 61 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p><p>"Colonel, I see that you are not accountable for this. If the d&mdash;&mdash;d
+fool had only made it 'Detail of the Court,' it might have passed
+unnoticed."</p>
+
+<p>"General," suggested the Colonel, "would not that have been improper?
+Would it not have implied an already existing organization of the court?
+whereas the phrase in the order is intended merely to indicate who shall
+compose the court."</p>
+
+<p>"It would have looked better, sir," said the General, somewhat sharply.
+"Colonel, you are not to blame for this; you can return to quarters,
+sir."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel bowed himself out, remounted his black horse, and while
+riding at a slow walk, could not but wonder if the Government would not
+have been the gainer if it had made it the business of the General to
+fold and endorse papers, and dust pigeon-holes. It was generally
+understood that this occupation had been, previous to his being placed
+in command of the Division, the sum-total of the General's military
+experience. And how high above him did this red-tapism extend? The
+General had been on McClellan's staff, and through his influence,
+doubtless, acquired his present position. Were its trifling details
+detaining the grand army of the Potomac from an onward movement in this
+most favorable weather, to the great detriment of national finances, the
+encouragement of the Rebellion, and the depression of patriots
+everywhere? Must the earnestness of the patriotic, self-sacrificing
+thousands in the field, be fettered by these cobwebs, constructed by men
+interested in pay and position? If so, then in its widest sense, is the
+utterance of an intelligent Sergeant, made a few days previous, true,
+that red-tape was a greater curse to the country than the rebellion. The
+loyal earnest masses would soon, if unfettered, have found <!-- Page 62 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>leaders
+equally loyal and earnest&mdash;Joshuas born in the crisis of a righteous
+cause, whose unceasing blows would not have allowed the rebels breathing
+spells. It is not too late; but how much time, blood, to say nothing of
+money, have been expended in ascertaining that a great Union military
+leader thought the war in its best phase a mere contest for boundaries.</p>
+
+<p>The black halted at the tent door, was turned over to his attendant, and
+the Lieut.-Colonel joined his tent companion the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>His stay was brief. In the course of a few minutes an orderly in great
+haste handed him the following note:</p>
+
+<p>"The General commanding Division desires to see Lieut.-Colonel &mdash;&mdash;
+without delay."</p>
+
+<p>The saddle, not yet off the black, was readjusted, and again the
+Judge-Advocate cantered over the gentle bluffs to Division
+Head-Quarters.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel," said the General, hardly waiting for his entrance, "these
+mistakes multiply so, as I proceed in my duty as Reviewing Officer, that
+I am utterly confounded as to what course to pursue."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please point them out, General?"</p>
+
+<p>"Point out the Devil!&mdash;will you point to something that is strictly in
+accordance with the regulations? Here you have 'Private John W. Holman,
+Co. I, 212th Regt. P. V.,' and then not two lines below, it is, John W.
+Holman, Private, Co. I, 212th Reg. P. V.' Now, by G&mdash;Colonel, one is
+certainly wrong, and <i>that</i> blunder did not come from Division
+Head-Quarters."</p>
+
+<p>"Will the General please indicate which is correct?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indicate! that's the d&mdash;&mdash;l of it, that is the perplexing question; my
+French authorities are silent on <!-- Page 63 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>the subject, and yet, sir, you must
+see that one must be wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"That does not follow, General; it would be considered a mere clerical
+error. Records that I have seen have titles preceding and following
+both."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no such thing in military law as a mere clerical error. Every
+thing is squared here by the regulations and military law. The General
+or Colonel who is unfortunate in consequence of strictly following
+these, will not, by military men, regular officers at least, be held
+accountable. Do not understand me as combating your knowledge of the
+law, Colonel; you may have excused, in your practice, bad records
+successfully on the ground of 'clerical errors,' but it will not do in
+the army. There's where volunteer officers make their mistakes; they
+don't think and act concertedly as regulars do. Individual judgment
+steps in too often, and officers' judgments play the D&mdash;l in the army.
+Now, in France, their rules in regard to this, are unusually strict."</p>
+
+<p>"They order this matter better in France then," observed the Colonel,
+mechanically making use of the hackneyed opening sentence of "The
+Sentimental Journey." "And they manage them better, Sir;&mdash;Another thing,
+Colonel," quickly added the General, "t's must be crossed and i's
+carefully dotted. There are several omissions of this kind that might
+have sent the Record back. By the way, whose hand-writing is this copy
+in?" said the General, looking earnestly at the Colonel. "A clerk's,
+sir." "A clerk! Another d&mdash;&mdash;d pretty piece of business," continued the
+General, rising. "Colonel, that record is not worth a G&mdash;d d&mdash;n not a
+G&mdash;d d&mdash;n, Sir! Who ever heard of a clerk being employed? no clerk has a
+right to know any thing of the proceedings."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 64 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p><p>"I have been informed, General, and have observed from published reports
+of proceedings of courts-martial, that clerks are in general use."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't be! Colonel, can't be! By G&mdash;d, there is another perplexing
+matter for my already over-taxed time, and yet the senseless people
+expect Generals to move large armies, and plan big battles, when their
+hands are full of these d&mdash;&mdash;d business details that cannot be neglected
+or delayed."</p>
+
+<p>The General resumed his seat, ran his fingers through his hair with
+frightful rapidity, as if gathering disconcerted and scattered ideas,
+for a moment or two, and then looking up dismissed the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>The black was again in requisition; and again the Colonel's thoughts,
+with increased feelings of disgust, were directed to what he could not
+but think the trifling details that, as the General admitted, delay the
+movements of great armies, and the striking of heavy blows. T's must be
+crossed when we ought to be crossing the Potomac; i's dotted when we
+ought to be dotting Virginia fields with our tents. And war so
+proverbially, so historically uncertain, has its rules, which, if
+adhered to, will save commanders from censure&mdash;judgment not allowed to
+interfere. It would appear so from many movements in the history of the
+Army of the Potomac. What would that despiser of senseless details,
+defier of rules laid down by inferior men, and cutter of red tape, as
+well as master-genius in the art of war, the Great, the First Napoleon,
+have said to all this. Shades of Washington, Marion, Morgan, all the
+Revolutionary worthies, Jackson, all our Volunteer Officers, of whose
+military records we are justly proud&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Of the mighty can it be<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That this is all remains of thee!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 65 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p><p>Generals leading armies such as the world never before saw, fettering
+movements on the field by the movements of trifling office details at
+the desk, which viewed in the best light are the most contemptible of
+excuses for delay.</p>
+
+<p>This time the old black was not unsaddled;&mdash;a fortunate thought, as
+another request for the immediate presence of the Judge Advocate
+compelled him to take his dinner of boiled beans hasty and hot.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the reader may think of the General's condition of mind during
+the preceding interviews, it was to reach its fever heat in this. The
+Colonel saw, as he entered the marquee, that his forced calmness of
+demeanor portended a storm. Whether the Colonel thought that a
+half-emptied good-sized tumbler of what looked like clear brandy which
+stood on the table before him, had anything to do with it, the reader
+must judge for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel, I had made up my mind to forward that Record with the mistakes
+I have already indicated to you, but after all I am pained to state that
+the total disregard of duty by the Court, and perhaps by yourself, in
+trifling&mdash;yes, by G&mdash;d&mdash;" here the General could keep in no longer, and
+rising with hand clinching the Record firmly, continued,&mdash;"trifling with
+a soldier's duty, the regulations, and the safety of the army will not
+allow it. Colonel, you are a lawyer, and is it possible that you can't
+see what that d&mdash;&mdash;d Court has done?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would be happy to be informed in what respect they have erred,
+General."</p>
+
+<p>"Happy to be informed! how they have erred! By G&mdash;d, Colonel, you take
+this outrageous matter cool. That Record," said the General, holding it
+up, and waving it about his head,&mdash;the red tape with <!-- Page 66 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>which the Judge
+Advocate had adorned it plentifully, if for no other purpose than to
+cover a multitude of mistakes, all the while streaming in the
+air,&mdash;"that Record is a disgrace to the Division. What does that Record
+show?" At this he threw it violently into a corner of the tent. "It
+shows, by G&mdash;d, that here was an enlisted soldier in the United States
+Army, found sleeping on his post in the dead hour of night, in the
+presence of the enemy, and yet&mdash;" said the General, lifting both hands
+clenched, "a pack of d&mdash;&mdash;d volunteer officers detailed as a court let
+him off. Yes, I'll be G&mdash;d d&mdash;&mdash;d," and his arms came down slapping
+against his hips, "let him off, with what? why a reprimand at dress
+parade, that isn't worth a d&mdash;n as a punishment. Here was a chance to
+benefit the Division; yes, sir, a military execution would do this
+Division good. It needs it; we'll have a d&mdash;&mdash;d sight now to be
+court-martialed. What will General McClellan say with that record before
+him? Think of that, Colonel.'</p>
+
+<p>"I would be much more interested in what Judge Advocate Holt would say,
+General, on account of his vastly superior ability in that department;
+and as to the death penalty, General, I conscientiously think it would
+be little short of, if not quite, murder." The General had resumed his
+seat, but now arose as if about to interrupt;&mdash;but the Colonel
+continued:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"General, that boy is but seventeen, with a look that indicates
+unmistakably that he is half an idiot. He has an incurable disease that
+tends to increase his imbecility. His memory, if he ever had any, is
+completely gone. The Articles of War, or instructions of officers as to
+picket duty, would not be remembered by him a minute after utterance,
+and not understood when uttered. I have thought since that I should have
+entered a plea of insanity for him. He had not <!-- Page 67 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>previously been upon
+duty for a month, and was that day placed on by mistake. The Court, if
+it had had the power, would have punished the officer that recruited him
+severely. He ought to be discharged; and the Court was informed that his
+application for discharge, based upon an all-sufficient surgeon's
+certificate, was forwarded to your head-quarters a month ago, and has
+not since been heard from. Besides, this was not a picket station, but a
+mere inside regimental camp guard."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel spoke rapidly, but with coolness;&mdash;all the while the
+General's eyes, fairly glowing, were gazing down intently upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel, if your manner was not respectful, I would think that you
+intended insulting me by your d&mdash;&mdash;d provoking coolness. Conscience!"
+said the General, sneeringly, "conscience or no conscience, that man
+must be duly sentenced. By G&mdash;d, I order it. You must reconvene the
+Court without delay. It is well seen it is not a detail of Regulars.
+Conscience wouldn't trouble them when a d&mdash;&mdash;d miscreant was upon trial.
+A boy of seventeen! Seventeen or thirty-seven! By G&mdash;d! he is a soldier
+in the Army of the United States, and must be tried and punished as a
+soldier. An idiot! What need you care about the brains of a soldier? If
+he has the army cap on his head, that's all you need require. Plea of
+insanity, indeed! We want no lawyer's tricks here. And as to that
+discharge, if it is detained at my head-quarters, it is because it was
+not properly folded or endorsed&mdash;may be will not fit neatly in the
+pigeon-hole. Colonel," continued the General, moderating his tone
+somewhat, "I must animadvert&mdash;by G&mdash;d, I must animadvert severely upon
+that Record."</p>
+
+<p>"General," quietly interrupted the Colonel, "you <!-- Page 68 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>will publish your
+animadversion, I trust, so that it can be read at dress parades, and the
+Division have the benefit of it."</p>
+
+<p>"There, Colonel," said the General, twitching his moustache violently,
+"there it is again. You appear perfectly courteous&mdash;but that remark is
+cool contempt. I want you to understand," his tones louder, and
+gesticulations violent, "that you must take my strictures, tell the
+court that they must impose the sentence I direct, and leave conscience
+to me, and no d&mdash;&mdash;d plea of insanity about it."</p>
+
+<p>"General," observed the Colonel, rising, "I am the counsel of the
+prisoner as well as of the United States. I cannot and will not injure
+my own conscience, wrong the prisoner, or humiliate the Government by
+insisting upon a death penalty."</p>
+
+<p>"Read my strictures to the court, and do your duty, sir, or I'll
+court-martial the whole d&mdash;&mdash;d establishment. Go and re-assemble your
+court forthwith."</p>
+
+<p>As he said this he handed a couple of closely written sheets of large
+sized letter-paper, tied with the inevitable red-tape, to the Colonel.
+The Colonel bowed himself out, and the chair in front of the
+pigeon-holes of the camp desk was again occupied by a living embodiment
+of red-tape.</p>
+
+<p>The court was forthwith notified. It immediately met. The strictures
+were read, and in case of many sentences, especially towards the close,
+from necessity re-read by the Judge Advocate. After considerable
+laughter over the document, and some little indignation at the
+unwarranted dictation of "their commanding General," of which title the
+General had taken especial pains to remind them at least every third
+sentence, the court decided not to change the sentence, and directed the
+Judge Advocate to embody their <!-- Page 69 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>reasons for the character of the
+sentence in his report. The reasons, much the same as those stated to
+the General by the Judge Advocate, were reduced to writing, and duly
+forwarded, with the record signed and attested, to their "commanding
+General." That record, like some other court-martial records of the
+Division, has not since been heard of as far as the Judge Advocate or
+any member of the court is informed. The poor boy a few days afterwards
+entered a hospital, not again to rejoin his regiment. His application
+for discharge has not been heard of. With no prospect of being fit for
+active service&mdash;dying by inches in fact,&mdash;he is compelled at Government
+expense to follow the regiment in an ambulance from camp to camp, and on
+all its tedious marches.</p>
+
+<p>The profanity in the foregoing chapter has doubtless disgusted the
+reader quite as much as its utterance did the Judge Advocate. And yet
+hundreds of the Division who have heard the General on hundreds of other
+occasions, the writer feels confident will certify that it is rather a
+mild mood of the General's that has been described. The habit is
+disgusting at all times. Many able Generals are addicted to the habit;
+but they are able in spite of it. That their influence would be
+increased without it, cannot be denied. It has been well said to be
+"neither brave, polite, nor wise." But now when the hopes of the nation
+centre in the righteousness of their cause, and thousands of prayers
+continually ascend for its furtherance from Christians in and out of
+uniform, how utterly contemptible! how outrageously wicked! for an
+officer of elevated position, to profane the Name under which those
+prayers are uttered, and upon which the nation relies as its "bulwark,"
+"its tower of strength," a very "present help in this its time of
+trouble."</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 70 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<p><i>A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac&mdash;Fitz John's Rail Order&mdash;Rails
+for Corps Head-Quarters</i> versus <i>Rails for Hospitals&mdash;The Western
+Virginia Captain&mdash;Old Rosy, and How to Silence Secesh Women&mdash;The Old
+Woman's Fixin's&mdash;The Captain's Orderly.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>Picket duty, while in this camp, was light. Even the little tediousness
+connected with it was relieved by the beautifully romantic character of
+the scenery. Confined entirely to the river front, the companies
+detailed were posted upon the three bluffs that extended the length of
+that front, and on the tow-path of the canal below.</p>
+
+<p>The duty, we have said, was light. It could hardly be considered
+necessary, in fact, were it not to discipline the troops. The bluffs
+were almost perpendicular, varying between seventy-five and one hundred
+feet in height. Immediately at their base was the Chesapeake and Ohio
+canal, averaging six feet in depth. A narrow towing-path separated it
+from the Potomac, which, in a broad, placid, but deep stream, broken
+occasionally by the sharp points of shelving rocks, mostly sunken, that
+ran in ridges parallel with the river course, flowed languidly; the
+water being dammed below as before mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>On one of the most inclement nights of the season, <!-- Page 71 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>the Company
+commanded by our Western Virginia captain had been assigned the
+towing-path as its station. No enemy was in front, nor likely to be,
+from the manner in which that bank of the river was commanded by our
+batteries. In consequence, a few fires, screened by the bushes along the
+river bank, were allowed. Around these, the reserve and officers not on
+duty gathered.</p>
+
+<p>In a group standing around a smoky fire that struggled for existence
+with the steadily falling rain, stood our captain. His unusual silence
+attracted the attention of the crowd, and its cause was inquired into.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, I'm disgusted; for the first time in my life since I have been in
+service; teetotally disgusted with the way things are carried on. I'm no
+greenhorn at this business either," continued the captain, assuming, as
+he spoke, the position of a soldier, and although somewhat ungainly when
+off duty, no man in the corps could take that position more correctly,
+or appear to better advantage. "I served five years as an enlisted man
+in an artillery regiment in the United States army, and left home in the
+night when I wasn't over sixteen, to do it; part of that time was in the
+Mexican war. Yes, sir, I saw nearly the whole of that. Since then, I've
+been in service nearly ever since this Rebellion broke out, and the
+hardest kind of service, and under nearly all kinds of officers, and by
+all that's holy, I never saw anything so mean nor was as much disgusted
+as I was to-day. Boys! when shoulder-straps with stars on begin to think
+that we are not human beings, of flesh and blood, liable to get sick,
+and when sick, needing attention like themselves, it's high time those
+straps change shoulders. These damp days we, and especially <!-- Page 72 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>our sick,
+ought to be made comfortable. One great and good soldier that I've often
+heard tell of, wounded, of high rank, and who lived a long time ago,
+across the ocean, refused, although dying for want of drink, to touch
+water, until a wounded private near him first had drunk. That's the
+spirit. A man that'll do that, is right, one hundred chances to one in
+other respects. We have had such Generals, we have them now, and some
+may be in this corps, but it don't look like it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Captain, what did you see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I had sent my Sergeant to get a few rails to keep a poor boy
+comfortable who had a high fever, and who could not get into the
+hospital for want of room. The wood that was cut from the hill was
+green, and the poor fellow had been nearly smoked to death. The Sergeant
+went with a couple of men, and was coming back, the men having two rails
+apiece, when just as they got the other side of the Toll-gate on the
+hill, the Provost-Guard stopped them, told them there was an order
+against their using rails, and they must drop them. It did no good to
+say that they were for a sick man, that was no go. They thought they had
+to do it, and did it. They hadn't come fifty yards toward camp, before
+one of those big six-mule corps-teams that have been hauling rails for
+the last four days, came along, and the rails were pitched into the
+wagon. When I heard of it I was wrothy. I cut a bee-line for the
+Adjutant and got the Order, and there it was in black and white, that no
+more fences&mdash;rebel fences&mdash;should be destroyed, and no more rails used.
+Now, I knew well that these corps-teams had hauled and hauled until the
+whole establishment, from General Porter down to his Darkies, were in
+rails up to their eyes, <!-- Page 73 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>and then, when they had their own fill, this
+order comes, and we, poor devils, might whistle. Here were our hospitals
+like smoke-houses, not fit for human beings, and especially the sick. It
+was a little too d&mdash;&mdash;d mean. I couldn't stand it. The more I thought of
+it the madder I got, and I got fighting mad, when I thought how often
+that same General in his kid gloves, fancy rig, and cloak thrown back
+from his shoulders to show all the buttons and stars, had passed me
+without noticing my salute. He never got a second chance, and never
+will. I started off, took three more men than the Sergeant had; went to
+the first fence I could find, and that was about two miles&mdash;for the
+corps-teams had made clean work&mdash;loaded my men and myself, and started
+back. The Provost-Guard was at the old place; I was bound to pass them
+squarely.</p>
+
+<p>"'Captain,' said the Sergeant, 'we have orders to stop all parties
+carrying rails.'</p>
+
+<p>"'By whose orders?'</p>
+
+<p>"'General Porter's.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I am one of General Porter's men. I have authority for this, sir,'
+said I, looking him full in the eye.</p>
+
+<p>"'Boys, move on!' and on we did move. When the Lieut. saw us filing left
+over the hill towards camp, he sent a squad after us. But it was too
+late. The Devil himself couldn't have had the rails in sight of my
+company quarters, and I told him so.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll report you to the Division General, and have you
+court-martialed, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Very well,' although I knew the General had a mania for
+courts-martial. 'I have been court-martialed four times, and cleared
+every clip.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Now let that court-martial come; somebody's meanness will see the
+light,' thought I.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 74 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>"Old Rosy, boys, was the man. I said I was disgusted, but we mustn't get
+discouraged. We have some earnest men&mdash;yes, I believe, plenty of them;
+but they're not given a fair show. It'll all come right, though, I
+believe. Men with hearts in them; and Rosy, let me tell you, is no runt
+in that litter.</p>
+
+<p>"'Captain,' said he to me one day when I had gone to his head-quarters
+according to orders, 'I have something that must be done without delay,
+and from what I've seen of you, you are just the man for the work. I
+passed our hospital a few minutes ago, and I thought it was about to
+blaze; the smoke came out of the windows, chimney, doors, and every
+little crack so damnably. I turned around and went in, and found that
+the smoke had filled it, and that the poor fellows were suffering
+terribly. Now, Captain, they have no dry wood, and they must have some
+forth with, and I'll tell you where to get it.</p>
+
+<p>"'The other day I rode by a nest of she-rebels, and found that they had
+cord upon cord of the best hickory piled up in the yard, as if cut by
+their husbands, before leaving, for use this winter. They have made
+provision enough for our hospital too. Now take three army wagons, as
+many men as you need, and go about three miles out the Little Gap Road
+till you come to a new weather-boarded house at the Forks. Make quick
+work, Captain.'</p>
+
+<p>"I did make quick work in getting there, for that was about ten, and
+about half-past eleven the government wagons were in the yard of the
+house and my company in front.</p>
+
+<p>"'We have no chickens,' squalled an old woman from a second-story
+window, 'nor pigs, nor anything&mdash;all gone. We are lone women.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Only in the day-time, I reckon,' said my orderly; <!-- Page 75 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>the same fellow
+that winked at the chaplain. He was one of the roughest fellows that
+ever kept his breath over night. Long, lank, ill-favored, a white
+scrawny beard, stained from the corners of his mouth with tobacco juice;
+but for all, I'd pick him out of a thousand for an orderly. He was
+always there, and his rifle&mdash;he always carried his own&mdash;a small bore,
+heavy barrel, rough-looking piece, never missed.</p>
+
+<p>"As the old woman was talking from the window, a troop of women, from
+eighteen to forty years old&mdash;but I am a better judge of horses' ages
+than women's; they slip us up on that pint too often&mdash;came rushing out
+of the door. They made all kinds of inquiries, but I set my men quietly
+to work loading the wood.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, Captain, you shan't take that wood,' said a well-developed
+little, rather pretty, black-haired woman, but with those peculiar black
+eyes, full of the devil, that you only see among the Rebels, and that
+the Almighty seems to have set in like lanterns in lighthouses to show
+that their bearers are not to be trusted. 'You shan't take that wood!'
+raising her voice to a scream. The men worked on quietly, and I
+overlooked the work.</p>
+
+<p>"'You dirty, greasy-looking Yankee,' said another, 'born in some
+northern poor-house.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And both parents died in jail, I'll bet.'</p>
+
+<p>"'If our Jim was only here, he'd handle the cowardly set in less time
+than one of them could pick up that limb.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You chicken thief, you come by it honestly. Your father was a thief
+before you, and your mother&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"This last roused me. I could hear nothing bad of her from man or woman.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 76 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p><p>"'You she-devil,' said I, turning to her, 'not one word more.' She
+turned toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"But they annoyed the men, and I concluded to keep them still.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sergeant,' said I, addressing the orderly, and nearing the house, the
+women close at my heels. 'Sergeant, as our regiment will camp near here
+to-morrow, we might as well look out for a company hospital. How big is
+that house?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Large enough, Captain; thirty by fifty at least.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How many rooms?'</p>
+
+<p>"'About three, I reckon, on first floor, and I guess the upper story is
+all in one, from its looks through the window. Plenty of room. Bully
+place, and what is more, plenty of ladies to nurse the poor boys.</p>
+
+<p>"The noses of the women not naturally cocked, became upturned at this
+last remark of the sergeant's. But they had become silent, and looked
+anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sergeant, here's paper and pencil, just note down the names of the
+sick, and the rooms we'll put them in, so as to avoid confusion.'</p>
+
+<p>"The sergeant ran the sharp end of the pencil half an inch in his mouth,
+and on the palm of his horny hand commenced the list, talking all the
+while aloud&mdash;slowly, just as if writing&mdash;'Let me see. My mem'y isn't
+more than an inch long, and there's a blasted lot of 'em.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jim Smith, Bob Riley, Larry Clark, got small-pox; Larry all broke out
+big as old quarters, put 'em in back room down stairs.' The women got
+pale, but small-pox had been common in those parts. 'George Johnson,
+Bill Davis, got the mumps.' 'The mumps, Sally, the mumps, them's what
+killed George, and they're so catchin'&mdash;whispered one of the women&mdash;and
+continued the sergeant, 'Bill Thatcher, George <!-- Page 77 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>Clifton the
+chicken-pox.' 'O Lord, the chicken-pox,' said another woman, 'it killed
+my two cousins before they were in the army a week.'&mdash;'Put them four,'
+said the sergeant, 'in the middle room down stairs. Save the kitchen for
+cookin', and up stairs put Jim Williams, Spooky Johnson, Tom Hardy, Dick
+Cramer, and the little cook boy; all got the measles.' 'The measles!'
+screamed out half-a-dozen together. 'Good-Lord, we'll be killed in a
+week.' 'They say,' said another black eye, 'that that crack Mississippi
+Brigade took the measles at Harper's Ferry, and died like flies. They
+had to gather them from the bushes, and all over. Brother Tom told me.
+He said our boys were worked nearly to death digging graves.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That was a good thing,' observed the sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"'You beast!' said the little old woman advancing towards him, and
+shaking her fist in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"'And what will become of us women?' screamed she.</p>
+
+<p>"'A pretty question for an old lady; we calculate that you ladies will
+wait on the sick,' drily remarked the sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"At this the women, thinking their case hopeless, with downcast looks
+quietly filed into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"The boys by this time had about done loading the teams. All the while I
+had watched the manners of the women closely and the house, and I came
+to the conclusion that it would pay to make a visit inside.</p>
+
+<p>"A guard was placed on the outside, and telling the sergeant and two men
+to follow, I entered. It was all quiet below, but we found when we had
+reached the top of the steps, and stood in the middle of the big room up
+stairs, the women in great confusion, some in a corner of the room, and
+a few sitting on the beds. Among the latter, sitting as we boys used to
+say on <!-- Page 78 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>her hunkers, with hands clasped about her knees, was the old
+woman. Besides the beds the only furniture in the room was a large,
+roughly made, double-doored wardrobe that stood in one corner.</p>
+
+<p>"We hadn't time to look around before the old woman screeched out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You won't disturb my private fixin's, will you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I rather think not,' slowly said the sergeant, giving her at the same
+time a comical look.</p>
+
+<p>"Notwithstanding repeated and tearful assurances that there was nothing
+there, that the men had taken off all the arms, hadn't left lead enough
+to mend a hole in the bottom of the coffee-pot, etc., etc., we began to
+search the beds, commencing at one corner. There were two beds between
+us and the old woman's, and although we shook ticks and bolsters, and
+made otherwise close examination, we discovered nothing beyond the
+population usually found in such localities in Western Virginia.</p>
+
+<p>"The old woman was fidgety. Her face, that at two reflections would have
+changed muscatel into crab apple vinegar, was more than usually
+wrinkled. 'O Lord, nothing here,' groaned she, as she sat with her back
+to the head-board. She did not budge an inch as we commenced at her bed.</p>
+
+<p>"The sergeant had gone to the head-board, I to the foot. I saw a twinkle
+in his eye as he turned over the rough comfort, his hand reached
+down&mdash;he drew it up gradually, and the old woman slid as gradually from
+the lock to the muzzle of a long Kentucky rifle. 'O Lord,' groaned she,
+as she keeled over on her right side at the foot of the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"A glow of admiration overspread the Sergeant's face as he looked at
+that rifle.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I swow, old woman, is this what you call a <!-- Page 79 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>private fixin'?'
+said the Sergeant. 'A queer bed-fellow you've got; and just look,
+Captain,' said he, trying the ramrod, 'loaded, capped, and half cocked.'</p>
+
+<p>"The heavy manner in which the old lady fell over satisfied me that we
+hadn't all the armory, and I directed her to leave the bed and stand on
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"'Can't, can I, Ann?' addressing one of the women.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, marm can't, she is helpless.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Got the rheumatics, had 'em a year and better,' groaned the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hadn't 'em when you shook your fist under my nose in the yard,' said
+the Sergeant. 'Get off the bed;' catching the old woman by the arm, he
+helped her off. She straightened up with difficulty, holding her clothes
+at the hips with both hands. 'Hold up your hands,' said the Sergeant. He
+was about to assist her, when not relishing that, she lifted them up; as
+she did so, there was a heavy rattling sound on the floor. The old woman
+jumped about a foot from the floor clear out of a well filled pillow
+cushion, dancing and yelling like an Indian. Some hardware must have
+struck her toe and made her forget her rheumatism.</p>
+
+<p>"That bag had two Colt's navy size, two pistols English make, with all
+the trappings for both kinds, and two dozen boxes of best make English
+water proof caps.</p>
+
+<p>"'Old woman,' said the Sergeant with a chuckle, 'your private fixin's as
+you call 'em, are worth hunting for.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the old woman had reached the side of a bed, and was too much
+engaged in holding her toe, to notice the remark.</p>
+
+<p>"The other beds were searched, but with no success. I had noticed while
+the old woman was hopping about a short fat woman getting behind some
+taller <!-- Page 80 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>ones in the corner and arranging her clothing. The old woman's
+contrivance made me think the corner worth looking at.</p>
+
+<p>"The women sulkily and slowly gave way, and another pillow-case was
+found on the floor, from which a brace of pistols, one pair of long
+cowhide riding boots, three heavy-bladed bowie knives, and some smaller
+matters, were obtained.</p>
+
+<p>"The wardrobe was the only remaining thing, and on it as a centre the
+women had doubled their columns.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Captain, don't,' said several at once beseechingly, 'we're all
+single women, and that has our frocks and fixin's in it,' as I touched
+the wardrobe.</p>
+
+<p>"'As far as I've seed there is not much difference between married
+women's fixin's and single ones,' coolly said the Sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"'There is not one of us married, Captain.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Sorry for that,' said the Sergeant, leisurely eyeing the women. 'If
+you'd take advice from a Yankee, some of you had better hurry up.'</p>
+
+<p>"The women were indignant, but smothered it, having ascertained that a
+passionate policy would not avail.</p>
+
+<p>"By this time one of the men had succeeded with his bayonet in forcing a
+door. The Sergeant had laid his hand on the door, when a pretty face,
+lit up with those same devilish black eyes, was looking into his half
+winningly, and a pair of small hands were clasping his arm. The
+Sergeant's head gradually fell as if to hear what she had to say, when
+magnetism, a desire to try experiments, or call it what you will, as
+'love,' although said to 'rule the camp,' has little really to do with
+the monotony of actual camp scenes, or the horrors of the field
+itself,&mdash;at any rate the Sergeant's head dropped suddenly,&mdash;a loud
+smack, followed <!-- Page 81 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>instantly by the dull sound of a blow,&mdash;and the
+Sergeant gently rubbed an already blackening eye, while the woman was
+engaged in drawing her sleeve across her mouth. Like enough some tobacco
+juice went with the sleeve, for the corners of the Sergeant's mouth were
+regular sluices for that article.</p>
+
+<p>"The Sergeant's eye did not prevent him from opening the door, however.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I declare, brother Jim's forgot his clothes and sword,' said one
+of the women, manifesting much surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you call that brother Jim's clothes?' said the Sergeant, grasping a
+petticoat, above which appeared the guard of a cavalry sabre, and
+holding both up to view. 'I tell you it's no use goin' on,' said the
+Sergeant, somewhat more earnestly, his eye may be smarting a little,
+'we're bound to go through it if it takes the hair off.' The women
+squatted about on the beds, down-hearted enough.</p>
+
+<p>"And through it we went, getting five more sabres and belts, and two
+Sharp's rifles complete in that side, and a cavalry saddle, holsters
+with army pistols, bridles, and a rifled musket, in the other side; all
+bran new. There was nothing in the lower story or cellar.</p>
+
+<p>"When I showed Rosy our plunder&mdash;and it hadn't to be taken to his tent
+either&mdash;when he heard of it, he came out as anxious and pleased as any
+of the boys,&mdash;he was a General interested in our luck more than his own
+pay,&mdash;he clapped me on the shoulder right before my men, and all the
+officers and men looking on, and said: 'Captain, you're a regular trump.
+Three cheers, boys, for the Captain and company.' And as he started them
+himself, the boys did give 'em, too. 'Captain, you'll not be
+forgotten&mdash;be <!-- Page 82 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>easy on that point.' And I was easy, until a fit of
+sickness that I got put my fortune for the time out of Rosy's hands. The
+men never forgot that trip. The Sergeant often said though, it was the
+only trip he wasn't altogether pleased with, because, I suppose, his
+black eye was a standing joke."</p>
+
+<p>Just then, a sentinel's hail and the reply, "Grand Rounds," "Field
+Officer of the day," hurried the Captain off, and the crowd to their
+posts.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 83 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Reconnoissance&mdash;Shepherdstown&mdash;Punch and Patriotism&mdash;Private Tom on
+West Point and Southern Sympathy&mdash;The Little Irish Corporal on John
+Mitchel&mdash;A Skirmish&mdash;Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and
+Chaplain&mdash;Battle of Falling Waters not intended&mdash;Story of the Little
+Irish Corporal&mdash;Patterson's Folly, or Treason.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>An old German writer has said that "six months are sufficient to
+accustom an individual to any change in life." As he might fairly be
+supposed to have penned this for German readers and with the fixed
+habits and feelings of a German, if true at all, it ought to hold good
+the world over. As we are more particularly interested in camps at
+present, we venture the assertion that six weeks will make a soldier
+weary of any camp. With our Sharpsburg camp, however, perhaps this
+feeling was assisted by the consciousness so frequently manifested in
+the conversation of the men that the army should be on the move.</p>
+
+<p>Hundreds of relatives and friends had taken advantage of the proximity
+of the camp to a railroad station to pay us a visit, and with them of
+course came eatables&mdash;not in the army rations&mdash;and delicacies of all
+kinds prepared by thoughtful heads and willing hands at home. Not
+unfrequently the marquees <!-- Page 84 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>of the officers were occupied by their
+families, who, in their enjoyment of the novelties of camp life, the
+drills, and dress parades of the regiment, treasured up for home
+consumption, brilliant recollections of the sunny side of war. All this,
+to say nothing of the scenery, the shade of the wood, that from the
+peculiar position of the camp, so gratefully from early noon extended
+itself, until at the hour for dress parade the regiment could come to
+the usual "parade rest" entirely in the shade. But the roads were good,
+the weather favorable, the troops effective, and the inactivity was a
+"ghost that would not down" in the sight of men daily making sacrifices
+for the speedy suppression of the Rebellion. The matter was constantly
+recurring for discussion in the shelter tent as well as in the marquees,
+in all its various forms. A great nation playing at war when its capital
+was threatened, and its existence endangered. A struggle in which inert
+power was upon one side, and all the earnestness of deadly hatred and
+blind fanaticism upon the other. An enemy vulnerable in many ways, and
+no matter how many loyal lives were lost, money expended by the
+protraction of the war, but to be assailed in one. But why multiply? Ten
+thousand reasons might be assigned why a military leader, without an
+aggressive policy of warfare, unwilling to employ fully the resources
+committed to him, should not succeed in the suppression of a Rebellion.
+The nation suffered much in the treason that used its high position to
+cloak the early rebel movement to arms, and delayed our own
+preparations; but more in the incapacity or half-heartedness that made
+miserable use of the rich materials so spontaneously furnished.</p>
+
+<p>In the improvement of the Regiment the delay at <!-- Page 85 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>the Sharpsburg camp was
+not lost. The limited ground was well used, and Company and Battalion
+drills steadily persevered in, brought the Regiment to a proficiency
+rarely noticed in regiments much longer in the field.</p>
+
+<p>"Three days' cooked rations, sixty rounds of ammunition, and under arms
+at four in the morning. How do you like the smack of that, Tom?"</p>
+
+<p>"It smacks of war," says Tom, "and it's high time." The first speaker
+had doffed the gown of the student in his senior year, greatly against
+the wishes of parents and friends, to don the livery of Uncle Sam. One
+would scarcely have recognised in the rough sunburned countenance,
+surmounted by a closely fitting cap, once blue but now almost red, and
+not from the blood of any battle-field&mdash;in the course slovenly worn blue
+blouse pantaloons, unevenly suspended, and wide unblacked army shoes,
+the well dressed, graceful accomplished student that commended himself
+to almost universal admiration among the young ladies of his
+acquaintance. The second speaker, thinking that a more opportune war had
+never occurred to demand the silence of the law amid resounding arms,
+had left his desk in an attorney's office, shelved his Blackstone, and
+with a courage that never flinched in the field of strife or in toilsome
+marches where it can perhaps be subjected to a severer test, had
+thoroughly shown that the resolution with which he committed himself to
+the war was one upon which no backward step would be taken. They were
+old friends, and fast messmates. Their little dog-tent, as the shelter
+tents were called, had heard from each many an earnest wish that their
+letters might smell of powder.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling then with which George uttered this <!-- Page 86 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>piece of news, and the
+joy of Tom as he heard it, can be appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>"What authority have you, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"Old Pigeon-hole's. I heard him, while on duty about his Head-quarters
+to-day, tell a Colonel, that the move had been ordered; that the War
+Department had been getting uncommonly anxious, and that it interfered
+with certain examinations he was making into very important papers."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll warrant it. I would like to see any move in a forward direction
+that would not interfere with some arrangement of his. His moves are on
+paper, and a paper General is just about as valuable to the country as a
+paper blockade."</p>
+
+<p>"Is the movement general?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course then it interferes. George, did you ever hear any patriotism
+about those Head-quarters? You have been a great deal about them."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I have seen a good deal of punch in that neighborhood."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll warrant it&mdash;more punch than patriotism. A great state of affairs
+this. There are too many of these half-hearted Head-quarters in the
+army. They ought to be cleaned out, and I believe that before this
+campaign is through it will be done. If it is not done, the country is
+lost."</p>
+
+<p>"Country lost! why of course; that is almost admitted about that
+establishment. They say we may be able to pen them up, and as they don't
+say any more they must think that is about all. I heard a young
+officer&mdash;a Regular&mdash;who seems to be intimate up there say: that there
+was no use of talking&mdash;that men that fought the way the Southerners&mdash;he
+didn't use the word Rebels&mdash;did, could not be conquered,&mdash;that <!-- Page 87 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>they
+were too much for our men, etc., etc. I could have kicked the
+shoulder-strapped coward or traitor, may be both, but if I had, old
+Pigeon-hole would have had a military execution for the benefit of the
+Volunteers in short order. And then he strutted, talking treason and
+squirting tobacco juice&mdash;and all the while our Government supporting the
+scoundrel. West Point was on his outside, but his conversation and
+vacant look told me plainly enough that outside of a Government position
+the squirt had not brains enough to gain a day's subsistence. But he's
+one of Pigey's 'my Regulars,' and to us Volunteers he can put himself on
+his dignity with a '<i>Procul</i>, <i>Procul</i>, <i>este Profani</i>.'"</p>
+
+<p>"George, don't stir me up on that subject any more. I get half mad when
+I think that Uncle Sam's worst enemies are those of his own household.
+We had better anticipate the Captain's order about this in our
+preparations, and not be up half the night."</p>
+
+<p>"Even so, Tom."</p>
+
+<p>George was correct; as to a move at least, for early dawn saw the
+Division and a detachment from another Division, en route to the river.
+There was the usual quiet in the camps along which they passed, showing
+that George was mistaken as to the move being general. The troops
+marching through a winding and wooded defile, passed the deservedly well
+known Brigade of General Meagher. "Here's Ould Ireland Boys," said the
+little Irish Corporal, pointing, as his face glowed with pride, to the
+flag adorned with "The Harp of Ould Ireland, and the Shamrock so green,"
+the emblems of the Emerald Isle.</p>
+
+<p>"Their General is an Irishman thrue to the sod, none of your rinegade
+spalpeens like John Mitchel&mdash;fighting for slave-holders in Ameriky, and
+against the <!-- Page 88 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>Lords and Dukes in Ould Ireland, and the slave-holders as
+Father Mahan tould me the worst of the two, more aristocratic,
+big-feeling, and tyrannical than the English nobility. He said, too,
+that the blackguard could never visit the ould sod again unless he
+landed in the night-time, and hid himself by day in a bog up to his
+eyes, and even then the Father said he believed the blissed mimory of
+St. Patrick,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'Who drove the Frogs into the Bogs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And banished all the Varmint,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>would clean him out after the rist of the varmin."</p>
+
+<p>"Three cheers for the Irish Brigade" greeted the Corporal's remarks.</p>
+
+<p>The troops crossed with difficulty and delay at the only ford&mdash;and
+wondered with reason at the activity of the Rebels in having transported
+across not only their army and baggage, but hundreds if not thousands of
+their dead and wounded. The road winding around the high rocks on the
+Virginia side, must have been in more peaceful times a favorite drive
+for the gentry of the neighborhood. Shepherdstown itself adorns a most
+commanding position. On the occasion of this Union visit its inhabitants
+appeared intensely Secesh. Not so in the early history of the rebellion;
+when Patterson's column "dragged its slow length along" through the
+valley of the Shenandoah. Scouting parties then saw Union flags from
+many a window. True, they streamed from dwellings owned by the
+merchants, mechanics, and laborers, the real muscle of the country; but
+this was true of most of the towns of the Border States, and more early
+energetic action in affording these classes protection would have
+secured us the aid of their strong hands. As it was, these resources
+were in great measure frittered away&mdash;gradually <!-- Page 89 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>drawn by what appeared
+an irresistible influence into the vortex of the Rebellion&mdash;or scattered
+wanderingly through the Loyal States, and worn down and exhausted in the
+support of dependent and outcast families.</p>
+
+<p>Sharpsburg was greatly altered. The yellow Rebel Flag designated almost
+every other building as a Hospital. Their surgeons in grey pompously
+paraded the streets. As the troops marched through, they were subjected
+to almost every description of insult. One interesting group of Rebel
+petticoated humanity standing in front of premises that would not have
+passed inspection by one of our Pennsylvania Dutch housewives, held
+their noses by way of showing contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess you have to do that, about them diggins. When did you scrub
+last?" said a bright-eyed officer's servant, whom a few years' service
+as a news-boy had taught considerable shrewdness.</p>
+
+<p>To annoy others "My Maryland" and "John Brown" were sung by the men.
+Around a toll-house at the west end of town, occupied by an old lady
+whose husband had been expelled with a large number of other patriotic
+residents, had congregated some wives of exiled loyal husbands, who were
+not afraid to avow their attachment for the old Union, by words of
+encouragement and waving of handkerchiefs. They were backed by a reserve
+force of negroes of both sexes, whose generous exhibition of polished
+ivories, to say the least, did not represent any great displeasure at
+the appearance of the troops.</p>
+
+<p>"There are the Reserves," said one of the boys, pointing to where the
+negroes stood.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and if they were called in the issue of this Rebellion would be
+speedy and favorable," said a <!-- Page 90 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>Captain in musical tones, "and I can't
+think but that this costly child's play will drive the nation into their
+use much sooner than many expect. Let them understand that they are the
+real beneficiaries of this war, and they will not stay their hands. And
+why shouldn't we use them? 'They are one of the means that God and
+nature have placed in our hands,' and old Virginia can't object to that
+doctrine."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Captain," said his First Lieutenant, "would you fight alongside of
+a darkie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Would you drive a darkie away if he came to assist you in a struggle
+for life?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but we have men enough without their aid."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget, Lieutenant, that, as matters now are, we have them fighting
+against us."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?"</p>
+
+<p>"They raise the crops that feed the Rebel army. They are just as much,
+perhaps not as directly, but just as really fighting against us as the
+founders who cast their cannon. And as to fighting alongside of them,
+they may have quite as many prejudices against fighting alongside of us.
+There is no necessity of interfering with either. Organize colored
+regiments; appoint colored line officers if efficient, and white field
+and staff officers, until they attain sufficient proficiency for
+command. As to their fighting qualities, military records attest them
+abundantly. The shrewd 'nephew of his uncle' has used them for years."</p>
+
+<p>The earnest argument of the Captain made a deep impression upon the men.
+The desperation of our case, depressed finances, heavy hospital lists,
+and many other causes, independently of abstract justice, are fast
+removing that question beyond the pale of prejudice.</p>
+
+<p>A halt was ordered, and the men rested on the <!-- Page 91 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>sward that bordered the
+hard pike, and in the immediate neighborhood of the village cemetery. It
+was literally crowded with graves, many of them fresh. Large additions
+had been made from surrounding fields, and they too were closely taken
+up by ridges covering the dead of Antietam.</p>
+
+<p>The surrounding country had suffered little from the ravages of war.
+Visited occasionally by scouting parties&mdash;principally cavalry&mdash;of both
+sides, there had been none of the occupation by large bodies of troops,
+which levels fences, destroys crops, and speedily gives the most fertile
+of countries the seeming barrenness of the desert. The valley had a
+reputation that ran back to an ante-Revolutionary date for magnificence
+of scenery and fertility of soil. Washington, with all the enthusiasm of
+ardent youth, paid it glowing encomiums in his field-notes of the
+Fairfax surveys. In later times, when the destinies of our struggling
+colonies rested upon his ample shoulders, the leaders of the faction
+opposed to him&mdash;for great and good as he was, he had jealous, bitter,
+and malignant enemies&mdash;settled a few miles beyond Shepherdstown, at what
+has since been known as Leetown. The farms, with few exceptions, had
+nothing of the slovenly air, dilapidated, worn-out appearance, that
+characterized other parts of Virginia. Upon inquiry we found that the
+large landowners were in the habit of procuring tenants from the lower
+counties of Pennsylvania, and that the thrift and close cultivation were
+really imported. In the course of time these tenants, with their
+customary acquisitiveness, became landowners themselves, and their farms
+were readily distinguishable by the farm buildings, and particularly by
+the large substantial red bank barns.</p>
+
+<p>The troops moved on to a wood, skirting either side <!-- Page 92 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>of the road, and
+were thrown into line of battle. The country was gently rolling, and the
+woods in front that crowned the summit of the low ridges were shelled
+before advancing. Occasionally Rebel horsemen could be seen rapidly
+riding from one wood to another, making observations from some
+commanding point.</p>
+
+<p>In line of battle by Brigade, flanked by skirmishers, the advance was
+made. To the troops this, although toilsome, was unusually exciting.
+Through woods, fields of corn whose tall tops concealed even the mounted
+officers, and made the men, like quails in standing grain, be guided by
+the direction of the sound of the command, rather than by the touch of
+elbows to the centre,&mdash;over the frequent croppings out of ledges of
+rock, through the little streams of this plentifully watered country,
+the movement slowly progressed. They had not advanced far when a shell
+screamed over their heads, uncomfortably close to the Surgeon and
+Chaplain, some fifty yards in the rear, and mangled awfully a straggler
+at least half a mile further back. As may be supposed, his fate was a
+standing warning against straggling for the balance of the campaign.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding further compliments from the rebels, who appeared to
+have our range, a roar of laughter greeted the dexterity with which the
+Chaplain and Surgeon ducked and dismounted at the sound of the first
+shell. Of about a size, and both small men, they fairly rolled from
+their horses. The boys had it that the little Dutch Doctor grabbed at
+his horse's ear, or rather where it ought to have been; as the horse was
+formerly in the Rebel service, and was picked up by the Doctor after the
+battle of Antietam, minus an ear, lost perhaps through a cut <!-- Page 93 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>from an
+awkward sabre, and missing it fell upon his hands and knees in front of
+the horse's feet.</p>
+
+<p>As the shells grew more frequent and direct in range, the men were
+ordered to halt and lie down. The field officers dismounted, and were
+joined by the Chaplain and Doctor leading their horses.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel, I no ride that horse," said the Doctor, sputtering and
+brushing the dust off his clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Too high&mdash;very big&mdash;" touching the top of the shoulder of the bony
+beast, and almost on tip-toe to do it, "had much fall, ground struck me
+hard," continued he, his eyes snapping all the while.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Doctor," remarked one of the other field officers, "we have told
+you all along that if you ever got in range with that horse, your life
+would hardly be worth talking about."</p>
+
+<p>"They not know him," anxiously said the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they know him. He has the best and plainest ear-mark in the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty close shoot that, anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>The result of this conversation was, that in the further movement the
+Doctor led his horse during the day.</p>
+
+<p>The firing ceased with no damage, save the bruises of the Doctor, and
+those received by our tonguey little Corporal, who asserted that the
+windage of a shell knocked him off a fence. As he fell into a stone
+heap, it is more than probable that he had some good reason for the
+movement&mdash;besides, why cannot Corporals suffer from wounds of that kind,
+frequently so fashionable among officers of higher grade?</p>
+
+<p>The onward movement was resumed. In the course of half an hour the
+cannonading again opened, <!-- Page 94 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>interspersed with occasional volleys of
+musketry. The rattling of musketry became incessant. Advancing under
+cover of rocky bluffs, the shells passed harmlessly over the Brigade. We
+soon ascertained that the Rebels had made a stand at a point where our
+advance, from the character of the country, necessarily narrowed into
+the compass of a strip of meadow-land. Here a brigade of Rebel infantry
+were drawn up in line of battle. Their batteries posted on a neighboring
+height, were guided by signals, the country not admitting of extended
+observation. The contest was brief. The gleam of the bayonets as they
+fell for the charge, broke the Rebel line, and they retired in
+considerable confusion to the wood in their rear. Our batteries soon
+shelled them from those quarters, and the advance continued&mdash;the
+skirmishers of both sides keeping up a rattling fire. Some Rebel
+earthworks were passed, and late in the afternoon the track of the
+Baltimore and Ohio railroad was crossed. The Rebels, before leaving, had
+done their utmost to complete the destruction of that much abused road.
+At intervals of every one hundred yards, piles of ties surmounted by
+rails were upon fire. These were thrown down by our men. About half a
+mile beyond the road, in a finely sodded valley, the troops were halted
+for the night, pickets posted, and the men prepared their meals closely
+in the rear of their stacks. The night was a pleasant one. An open air
+encampment upon such a night is one of the finest phases of a soldier's
+life. Meals over, the events of the day were discussed, or such matters
+as proved of interest to the different groups.</p>
+
+<p>One group we must not pass unnoticed. The majority lounged lazily upon
+the grass, some squatted upon their knapsacks, while a large stone was
+given <!-- Page 95 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>by common consent to a tall, fine-looking Lieutenant, the
+principal officer present.</p>
+
+<p>"Corporal," said he, addressing the little Irish Corporal, "do you know
+how near we are to Martinsburg?"</p>
+
+<p>"Faith I don't, Lieutenant."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know the exact distance myself, but we are not over three or
+four miles from the road that we took when we guarded the ammunition
+train from Martinsburg to Charlestown."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's the ould First ye are spaking about, is it? Ov coorse I
+ricollect Martinsburg, and the markit-house where I guarded the fifty
+nagurs that Gineral Patterson had ordered to be arrested for having
+stripes on their pantaloons, Uncle Sam's buttons on their caps, and
+belts with these big brass U. S. plates on. Oh, but it was a swate
+crowd. The poor divils were crowded like cattle on cars, and it was one
+of the hot smothering nights. I couldn't help thinkin', that by and by,
+if our armies didn't move faster, the nagurs would have little trouble
+gettin' into uniforms. They have a nat'ral concate about such things.
+One poor fellow rolled the whites of his eyes awfully, and almost cried
+when I ordered him out of his red breeches."</p>
+
+<p>"The day has not come yet, and need not," rejoined the Lieutenant, "if
+our generals do their duty. Don't you recollect how we were hurried from
+Frederick, and after marching seven miles out of the way, made good time
+for all to Williamsport&mdash;how bayonets appeared to glisten upon every
+road leading into the town; and then our crossing the river, the band
+all the while playing 'The Star-spangled Banner,' and the march we made
+to Martinsburg, passing over the ground where the battle of Falling
+Waters had but a <!-- Page 96 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>few days before been fought? If that battle had been
+followed up as it should have been, Johnson would never have reached
+Bull Run."</p>
+
+<p>"Be jabers! do you know, Lieutenant, that that fight was all a mistake
+upon our part? Shure, our ginerals niver intended it."</p>
+
+<p>A laugh, with the inquiry "how he knew that?" followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't I hear a Big Gineral, that I was acting as orderly for while in
+Martinsburg&mdash;for they made orderlies of corporals thim days&mdash;tell a
+richly-dressed old lady, 'That it was our policy to teach our misguided
+Southern brethren, by an imposing show of strength, how hopeless it
+would be to fight against the Government.' The lady said, 'That would
+save much bloodshed, would become a Christian nation, and would return
+them as friends to their old way of thinking. 'Yes, madam!' said the
+Gineral, 'there is no bitter feeling in our breasts,' clasping his
+breast. 'The masses south will soon see their country surrounded by
+volunteers in great numbers, and that the war, if protracted, must
+involve them all in ruin. When the war is over, madam, fanatics on both
+sides can be hung.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That was a dreadful affair at Falling Waters, General,' said the lady,
+with a strange twinkle in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, madam,' replied the General, coloring up to his ears, 'a blunder
+of some of our volunteer officers. Ordinary military prudence made us
+send forward some force to reconnoitre before crossing the main army.
+These troops were to fall back if the enemy appeared in force. Not
+understanding their orders, or carried away by the excitement of the
+moment, they engaged the enemy with the unfortunate results to which you
+allude.'</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 97 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p><p>"Av it would have been proper for a corporal, I would have asked the
+Gineral what Johnny Reb would do while we were taching him all that.
+Thim's the Gineral's exact words, for I paid particular attention. I put
+them thegither with what I had heard from a Wisconsin boy, and I got the
+whole history of that fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have it," shouted the crowd, now considerably increased, "at
+once!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, they were sent forward to reconnoitre, as the Gineral
+said, and there was a Wisconsin regiment of bear hunters and the like,
+and a Pennsylvania regiment of deer hunters and Susquehannah raftsmen
+pretty well forward. These Wisconsin chaps, in dead earnest, brought
+their rifles along all the way from Wisconsin, and, like the
+Susquehannah fellows, they couldn't kape hands off the trigger if there
+was any game about.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they got to Falling Waters without stirring up anything; you
+recollect, Lieutenant, where that rebel officer's house was burned down,
+and then the battery that was along with them, seeing some
+suspicious-looking Grey Backs dodging in and out of a wood, let them
+have a few round of shells just to see whether they were in force or
+not, according to orders. The Rebs made tracks for a low piece of ground
+behind a ridge, and then formed line of battle. Our men, with a yell,
+went forward, and when they saw the Rebs in line, these two Colonels,
+thinking they had been sent out to fight, and that their men didn't
+carry guns for nothing, ordered them to fire; and then they ordered them
+to load again, in order to relave their hips as much as possible from
+the load of ammunition; and then they fired again; and then, gittin'
+excited, and thinkin' this work too slow, and that it <!-- Page 98 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>wouldn't do to
+take such bright bayonets home, they ordered a charge, and cheering,
+yelling, and howling, our boys went at the Rebs. The Rebs didn't stand
+to meet them, but fell back behind a barn. The batteries burned
+that,&mdash;and then they tried to form line again, but no use. As soon as
+our fellows gave the yell, they were off like all possessed. They had
+prepared to run by tearing the fences down; and then it was trying to
+form line, and breaking as soon as our fellows howled a little, all the
+way for five long miles to Martinsburg; and the last our boys saw of the
+Rebs was their straight coat-tails at the south end of the town. And
+that was the whole battle of Falling Waters; and may be Ould Patterson
+wouldn't have got to Martinsburg if them Colonels had reported the Rebs
+in force, and not got excited.</p>
+
+<p>"But how did you hear all this? You forget that part of it."</p>
+
+<p>"And couldn't you let that go? I thought I could concale that.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know, Lieutenant, our ould Colonel boarded at the Brick
+Hotel, along the Railroad, above where the long strings of locomotives
+were burned, as the Gineral says, by our 'misguided southern friends;'
+and I was about there considerably on duty. One afternoon, a
+jolly-looking little chap, one of the Wisconsin boys, and one after my
+own heart&mdash;and he proved it, too, by trating me to several drinks&mdash;came
+along with a Rebel Artillery officer's coat under his arm. And we looked
+at the coat, and talked and drank, and drank and talked, until the
+Wisconsin chappy put it on, just to show me how the Rebel officer looked
+in it. It was a fine grey, trimmed with gold lace and scarlet, and the
+Wisconsin chappy looked gay in it, barring the sleeves were <!-- Page 99 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>several
+inches too long, and the waist buttons came down nearly a foot too far,
+and it was too big round the waist. And he showed me after every drink
+what he did and what the Officer did,&mdash;and, to tell the plain truth, we
+got a drop too much,&mdash;and the Wisconsin chappy got turning back-hand
+springs against the side of the hotel, and I tried to do the same, to
+the great sport of the crowd. But it didn't last long. A corporal's
+guard took&mdash;or rather carried&mdash;us to the guard-house, and towards
+morning, when we sobered up, he tould me the whole story."</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty well put together, Terry."</p>
+
+<p>"And the blissed truth, ivery word of it."</p>
+
+<p>The night was wearing away&mdash;work before them in the morning&mdash;and the
+group dispersed for their blankets, from which we will not disturb them
+until the succeeding chapter.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 100 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Reconnoissance concluded&mdash;What we Saw and What we didn't See, and what
+the Good Public Read&mdash;Pigeon-hole Generalship and the Press&mdash;The
+Preacher Lieutenant and how he Recruited&mdash;Comparative Merits of Black
+Union Men and White Rebels&mdash;A Ground Blast, and its effect upon a
+Pigeon-hole General&mdash;Staff Officers Striking a Snag in the Western
+Virginia Captain&mdash;Why the People have a right to expect active Army
+Movements&mdash;Red Tape and the Sick List&mdash;Pigeon-holing at Division
+Head-quarters.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>In the misty morning arms were taken and the forward resumed. Occasional
+Rebel corpses passed showed the work of our sharpshooters. In a short
+time the ground again prevented the movement in line of battle, and the
+troops marched by the flank over a road well wooded on each side, until
+they reached what proved to be the farthest point made by the
+reconnoissance&mdash;a large open plateau, bounded on the north and west by a
+wooded ridge to which it gradually rose, and which was said to border
+the Oppequan. On the south, at an average distance of five hundred yards
+from the road, was a strip of timber land. Slightly west by south, but
+upon the north side of the road, was a rise of ground, in the rear of
+which, but upon the south side of the road, were a farmer's house and
+out-buildings. The troops pursued their march until the head of the
+column arrived <!-- Page 101 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>opposite the house. Suspicious-looking horsemen were
+discovered on the edge of the woods that crowned the ridge. The order
+was given that the troops should leave the road and take cover on its
+south side, a position not commanded by the ridge. The order was not
+executed before a Rebel officer, on a white-tailed dun horse, the tail
+particularly conspicuous against the dark background of the wood, was
+observed signalling to the extreme right of what was now supposed to be
+the Rebel line. Almost instantly some half a dozen pieces of artillery
+were placed in position, at various points on the brow of the circular
+ridge, completely commanding, in fact flanking our position. Our troops,
+however, were not disturbed, although every instant expecting a salute
+from the batteries, as the range was easy and direct. While the troops
+were being placed in position behind the house the batteries were posted
+on the rise. A few hours passed in this position. The Rebel batteries in
+plain view, horsemen continually emerging and disappearing in the wood.
+Was it the force that we had driven before us? or were the Rebels in
+force upon that ridge, making the Oppequan their line of defence? Better
+ground upon which to be attacked could not be chosen. The long distance
+to be traversed under fire of any number of converging batteries, would
+have slaughtered men by the thousands. But again, if the Rebels were in
+force, why did they not attack us? Outflanking us was easy. With a
+superior force our retreat could easily be intercepted, and if we
+escaped at all, it would be with heavy loss. Their batteries threatened,
+but no firing. All was quiet, save the noise made by the men in
+stripping an orchard in their immediate front, and the commands of their
+officers in ordering them back to the ranks.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 102 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p><p>The quiet was provoking, and all manner of discussion as to the Rebel
+force, movements, etc., was indulged in. Many contended that they were
+but threatening&mdash;others, that they were in force, that was their line of
+defence, and the plateau in front their battle-ground. This decision the
+General in command seems to have arrived at, as the flaming telegrams in
+the Dailies, in the course of a day or two, announced that the Rebels
+were discovered in great force, strongly posted in a most defensible
+position. After the lapse of an hour or two, the order for the homeward
+march was given, and strange to say, that although marching by the flank
+the last man had disappeared from their view, behind the cover of the
+wood, before they opened fire. They then commenced shelling the woods
+vigorously, and continued firing at a respectful distance, doing no
+damage, until night set in. In the course of the afternoon it commenced
+raining, and continued steadily throughout the night. The troops
+encamped for the night in Egyptian darkness, and what was worse, in a
+meadow fairly deluged with water.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what does all this mean?" inquired one of a crowd, huddled
+together, hooded by blanket and oil-cloth, protecting themselves as best
+they could from the falling rain, for sleep was out of question to all
+but the fortunate few who can slumber in puddles.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it all mean, Charlie? Why it means a blind upon Uncle Abraham
+and his good people. That's what it means."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Lieutenant, I am surprised that a man of your usual reserve and
+correct conversation, should talk in that style about our commander."</p>
+
+<p>"Sergeant, it is high time that not only individuals, whether reserved
+or not, but the people at large <!-- Page 103 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>should denounce this delay that is
+wearing out the life of the nation. Weeks have passed since the battle
+of Antietam, and after repeated urgings on the part of the President,
+and repeated promises on the part of our commander, we have this
+beggarly apology for a movement. Yes, sir, apology for a movement.
+To-morrow's Dailies will tell in flaming capitals, how the Rebels were
+posted in large force in a strong position, and in line of battle upon
+the Oppequan, intimating thereby that further delay will be unavoidable
+to make our army equal to a movement. Now this humbugging an earnest
+people is unfair, unworthy of a great commander, and if he be humbugged
+himself again as with the Quaker guns at Manassas, the sooner the
+country knows it the better for its credit and safety. How can any
+living man tell that the batteries we saw to-day upon the ridge, are not
+the batteries we drove before us yesterday? The probability is that they
+are."</p>
+
+<p>The speaker, as intimated by the Sergeant, was a man of reserve, quiet,
+and to the last degree inoffensive in his manner. A professing
+Christian, consistent in, and not ashamed of his profession, he had the
+respect of his command, and a friend in every acquaintance in the
+regiment. Educated for the ministry, he threw aside his theological text
+books on the outbreak of the Rebellion, and bringing into requisition
+some earlier lessons learned at a Military Academy, he opened a
+recruiting list with the zeal of a Puritan. It was not circulated, as is
+customary, in bar-rooms, but taking it to a rural district, he called a
+meeting in the Township Church, and in the faith of a Christian and the
+earnestness of a patriot, he eloquently proclaimed his purpose and the
+righteousness of the war. Success on a smaller scale, but like <!-- Page 104 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>that of
+Peter the Hermit, followed his endeavor, and his quota of the Company
+was soon made up by the enlistment of nearly every able-bodied young man
+in the Township. His recruits fairly idolized him, and in their rougher
+and more unlettered way, were equally earnest advocates of the
+suppression of the Rebellion by any and every means.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Abolitionism will crop out from time to time, like the ledges of
+rock in the country we have just been passing through," said a Junior
+Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"Call it Abolitionism, or what you will," replied his Senior. "I am for
+the suppression of the Rebellion by the speediest means possible. I am
+for the abolition of everything in the way of its suppression."</p>
+
+<p>"You would abolish the Constitution, I suppose, if you thought it in the
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"I would certainly amend the Constitution, had I the power, to suit the
+exigencies of the times. What is the Constitution worth without a
+country for it to control?"</p>
+
+<p>"There it comes. Anything to ease the nigger."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I thank God that this Rebellion strikes a death-blow at
+slavery. That wherever a Federal bayonet gleams in a slave State, we can
+see a gleam of eternal truth lighting up the gloom of slavery. The
+recent Proclamation of the President was all that was needed to place
+our cause wholly upon the rock of God's justice, and on that base the
+gates of the hell of slavery and treason combined, shall not prevail
+against it."</p>
+
+<p>"Preaching again, Lieutenant," said our Western Virginia Captain, who
+was the Lieutenant's Senior officer, as he strolled leisurely toward the
+crowd. "I tell you, Lieutenant, if Old Abe don't make better
+<!-- Page 105 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>preparations to carry out his Proclamation, he had better turn Chinese
+General at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Give him time, Captain. January 1 may bring preparations that we little
+dream of. At any rate, it places us in a proper position before the
+world. What ground had we to expect sympathy from the anti-slavery
+people of Europe, when we made no effort to release the millions
+enslaved in the South from bondage?"</p>
+
+<p>"As far as using the negroes as soldiers is concerned, it seems a day
+behind the fair. It should have been issued earlier. Why, we could have
+had them by thousands in Western Virginny, and officers in our regiment,
+who were with him, tell me that Patterson could have mustered an army of
+them. Instead of that they were driven from his lines, and when they
+brought him correct information as to the Rebels at Winchester, it was
+'don't believe the d&mdash;&mdash;d nigger,' and all this while he dined and wined
+with the Rebel nabobs about Charlestown. Boys, we commenced this war
+wrong. I'm a Democrat, and always have been one; but I'm not afraid to
+say that we've all along been trying our best to make enemies of the
+only real friends we have inside of Rebel lines. Now, I don't like the
+nigger better than some of my neighbors; but in my opinion, a black
+Union man is better than a white Rebel any day. To say nothing of their
+fighting, why don't our Generals use them as servants, and why are they
+not our teamsters and laborers? Look at our able-bodied men detailed for
+servants about Pigeon-hole's Head-quarters."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Captain," interrupted the Sergeant, "Pigey has a big
+establishment, and see if the papers don't make him out a big General
+for this daring reconnoissance."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 106 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p><p>"This daring tomfoolery! If he'd come back to old Rosecrans with his
+story about a few pieces of artillery posted on a ridge, Rosy would want
+to know why the d&mdash;&mdash;l he didn't find out what was behind them."</p>
+
+<p>"He showed great experience a few weeks ago," continued the Sergeant,
+"when the Western fellows let off one of their ground blasts. 'Where did
+that shell explode?' inquired Pigey, galloping up with his staff and
+orderlies to our Regimental Head-quarters. 'I heard no shell,' says the
+Colonel. 'Nor I,' says the Lieut.-Colonel. 'I did hear a ground blast,'
+said the Lieut.-Colonel, 'such as the boys in the Regiment below
+occasionally make from the rebel cartridges they find.' 'Ground blast!
+h&mdash;l!' says the General, excitedly, his eyes flashing from under his
+crooked cocked hat: 'Don't you think that an officer of my experience
+and observation would be able to distinguish the explosion of a shell
+from that of a ground blast?' 'No shell exploded, General,' said the
+Colonel, 'within the limits of my regiment.' 'The d&mdash;&mdash;l it
+didn't&mdash;would you have me disbelieve my own ears? Now, I have issued
+orders enough about permitting these unexploded shells to lie about, and
+I purpose holding the Colonels responsible for all damage. Suppose that
+explosion was heard at corps head-quarters, as it doubtless was, and the
+inquiry is made from what quarter the rebels threw the shell, what reply
+am I, as the commanding General of this division, to make?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell them that it was a ground blast,' said a Second Lieutenant,
+politely saluting. 'I have just been down and saw the hole it made.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You saw the hole! and just below here! The d&mdash;&mdash;l you did! D&mdash;n the
+ground blasts!' and the General turned his horse's head and started
+towards <!-- Page 107 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>division head-quarters at a full gallop, followed by his
+grinning staff."</p>
+
+<p>"He's not to blame so much, boys," remarked the Captain. "He was a quiet
+clerk in the Topographical Department when the war broke out, I've been
+told, and I've no doubt he dusted the pigeon-holes in his charge
+carefully, and folded the papers neatly. When McClellan looked about for
+material to fill up his big staff with, who was so well calculated to
+attend to the topography of his battle-fields, considering that he
+fought so few, and most of those he had to fight on the Peninsula, the
+rebels got next day, as our Division General. Now, as Little Mac is not
+particularly noted for close acquaintance with rebel shells, the General
+has had small chance of knowing what kind of noise they do make when
+they burst. His great blunder, or rather, the Government's, is his
+taking command of a division, if it has but two brigades. I heard a
+Major say he had greatness thrust upon him. He's a small man in a big
+place. West Point has turned out some big men, like Rosecrans, Grant,
+Hooker, and many others that are a credit to the country&mdash;men of genuine
+talent, who have none of those foolish prejudices, that the regulars are
+the only soldiers, and that volunteers are a mere make-shift, that can't
+be depended upon. And West Point, like all other institutions, has had
+its share of small men, that come from it with just brains enough to
+carry a load of prejudice against volunteers and the volunteer service,
+and a very little knowledge of the ordinary run of military matters. An
+officer of real ability will never be a slave to prejudice. These small
+men are the Red-Tapists of the army&mdash;the Pigeon-Hole-Paper Generals, and
+being often elevated and privileged unduly, because they are from West
+<!-- Page 108 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>Point, they play the very devil in their commands. Our corps commander,
+who was a teacher there, has brought a full share of the last kind into
+the corps.</p>
+
+<p>"I wander about a good deal among other camps of this corps, pick up
+information and make myself acquainted without standing on ceremony. I
+never wait for that. I always had a habit of doing it, and I honestly
+believe, from what I see and hear, there has been a studied effort, from
+some high commander, to teach these young regular officers
+treason,&mdash;yes, boys, treason,&mdash;because when a man tells me that we can't
+conquer the Rebels, and that after a while we'll have to make peace,
+etc., I set him down for a traitor; he is aiding and abetting the
+enemies of his country. If that ain't treason I'd like to know what is."</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain headed off a lot of young regulars the other evening a
+little the prettiest," said the Sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have it!" said a dozen in the crowd, now considerably increased.</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain," continued the Sergeant, "had asked me to take a walk with
+him after dress-parade, and we strolled along the Sharpsburg road
+towards Corps Head-quarters. As we got just beyond the house and barn
+where the Rebel wounded are, we came upon a crowd of officers,
+commissioned and non-commissioned, and some privates. A quite young
+officer, with a milk-and-water face and a moustache like mildew on a
+damp Hardee, was talking very excitedly about the Administration not
+appreciating General McClellan; that there wasn't intellect enough there
+to appreciate a really great military genius; that European officers
+praised him as our greatest General, and that even the Rebel officers
+said that they feared him more than any of our Commanders; and yet all
+the <!-- Page 109 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>while the Abolition Administration tied his hands and fettered his
+movements, and all because Little Mac wasn't crazy enough to say that
+the Rebels could be subjugated and their armies exterminated, as some
+fanatical Regulars and nearly all the Volunteer officers pretend to say.
+'Now, I believe,' said the officer, thrusting his thumbs between his
+armpits and his vest, and puffing out his breast pompously, 'I believe,
+as Little Mac says, 'we can drive them to the wall;' we can lessen the
+limits of their country; but, gentlemen, after all, there will have to
+be a peace.'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," said the Sergeant, "the Captain was going to break in upon
+him here. He threw back his cap till the rim was on top of his head,
+rammed his hands into his pockets, and edged his way a little further
+into the crowd, towards the speaker; but he didn't, and the speaker went
+on to say:</p>
+
+<p>"'There are the people, too, crazy about a forward movement. Why don't
+they come down and shoulder muskets themselves?'</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain could hold in no longer. He drew his hands out of his
+pockets, straightened them along his side, like a game rooster
+stretching his wings just before a fight, and sidling up to the officer,
+looking at him out of the corner of his eye, he burst out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Why don't they shoulder muskets themselves? I'll tell you
+why,&mdash;because we are here to do it for them. They have sent us, they pay
+us, and they've a right to talk, and I hope they will talk. Anything
+like a decent forward movement of this Corps would have saved the
+disgrace of the second Bull Run battle. We all know how the Corps lagged
+along the road-side, and the Rebel cannon all the while thundering in
+the ears of its Commander.'</p>
+
+<p>"'A Volunteer officer, I suppose,' said the young <!-- Page 110 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>officer, somewhat
+sneeringly. 'Where have you ever seen service?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir, a Volunteer officer,' said the Captain straightening up,
+facing full the officer, and eyeing him until his face grew paler.
+'Where have I seen service? In Mexico, as private in the 4th Regular
+Artillery, while you were eating pap with a spoon, you puppy! You had
+better have stayed at that business; it was an honest one, at any rate,
+and Uncle Sam would have been saved some pay that you draw, while, like
+a dishonest sneak, you preach treason.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How dare you insult a Regular officer?' said a gold-striped, dandified
+fellow, as he twisted the ends of his moustache into rat-tails.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who the d&mdash;&mdash;l are you?' said the Captain, turning on him so suddenly
+that the officer commenced to back; 'with your gold lace on your
+shoulders that may mean anything or nothing. What are you anyhow?
+Captain? Lieutenant? Clerk? or Orderly? Those straps are a good come
+off, boys.' The crowd laughed. 'I suppose he thinks he's a staff
+officer.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I am, and a Lieutenant in the Regular army,' said the officer angrily,
+and giving the word 'Regular' the full benefit of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'Regular and be d&mdash;&mdash;d,' retorted the Captain. 'I want you both to
+understand that I am a Captain in the Volunteer service of the United
+States; that that service is by Act of Congress on a footing with the
+Regular service, and that I'll always talk in this style when I hear
+treason. I am the superior officer of you both, and have a right to talk
+to you. I've been in service since the Rebellion broke out, and by the
+mother of Moses, I never heard treason preached by officers in Uncle
+Sam's uniform till I got into this Corps. It makes my blood boil, and I
+won't stand it. <!-- Page 111 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>Pretty doctrine you are trying to teach these soldiers;
+but I know by their faces they understand the matter better than you,
+and you can't do them any damage.' 'That's so,' sang out several of the
+crowd. 'You fellows all talk alike. I have heard dozens of you talk in
+the same way, and I believe your ideas are stocked from a higher source.
+There is something wrong in the head of this Grand Army of the Potomac.
+The way it's managed, grand only in reviews.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We shall report you, sir,' said the Rat-tailed Moustache, 'for
+speaking disrespectfully of your superior officers.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Report as quick as you please. About that time you'll find another
+report at the War Department, against two Regular Lieutenants, for
+speaking discouraging and disloyal sentiments.'</p>
+
+<p>"'A Volunteer officer would stand a big chance at the Department making
+a complaint against Regulars,' said the officer, as they both backed out
+of the crowd, followed by a couple of non-commissioned officers and
+privates.</p>
+
+<p>"'You d&mdash;&mdash;d butterflies,' roared the Captain after them. 'I'll bet ten
+dollars to one that you only stayed in service when the war broke out,
+because you thought you could trust greenbacks better than Confederate
+scrip.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You shall hear from us,' replied Rat-tail, as they walked on.</p>
+
+<p>"'Am ready to hear from both at once now, you cowardly sneaks,' sang out
+the Captain. 'Don't believe you ever smelt powder, or ever will, if you
+can help it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Boys,' said the Captain, who had the sympathies of the crowd that
+remained strongly with him. 'These shallow-brained fellows and some
+older ones that <!-- Page 112 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>wear stars, that havn't head enough to cut loose from
+the Red-tape prejudice against us Volunteers, are a curse to the Army of
+the Potomac. Is it any wonder that this Grand Army, burdened with
+squirts of that stripe, is a burlesque and a disgrace to the country for
+its inefficiency. In the West, where Regular officers, unprejudiced, go
+hand in hand with Volunteers, we make progress. But what's the use of
+talking, the body won't move right if the heart's rotten.'</p>
+
+<p>"'True as preachin',' said one of the men, and the sentiment seemed
+approved by the crowd, as we gradually took up the homeward step."</p>
+
+<p>"Has the Sergeant told 'the whole truth,' and nothing but the truth?"
+inquired a Lieutenant, a lawyer at home, of the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," replied the Captain firmly, "and I'll stick by the whole of
+it, and a good deal more."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've been slow about believing many statements that I have
+heard," continued the Lieutenant; "but to-day I heard some facts from a
+Colonel in the Second Brigade that fairly staggered me. His Regiment,
+through some Red-tape informality, has been without tents. In
+consequence, considerable sickness, principally fever, has prevailed.
+Some time ago he made a request to Division Head-quarters, for
+permission to clean out and use the white house that stands near his
+Regiment, and that, until lately, was full of wounded rebels, as a
+hospital. Corps Head-quarters must be heard from. After considerable
+delay, the men in the meanwhile sickening and dying, the request was
+denied. The sickness, through the rains, increased, and the application
+was renewed with like success. The owner, who was a Rebel sympathizer,
+was opposed, and other like excuses, that in the urgency of the case
+should not have been considered at all, were <!-- Page 113 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>given. The sickness became
+alarming in extent. The Regiment was entirely without shelter, save that
+made from the few pine boughs to be had in the neighborhood. The Colonel
+took some boards that the rebels had spared from the fence surrounding
+the house, and with them endeavored to increase the comfort of the men.
+In the course of a day or two, a bill was sent to him from
+Head-quarters, with every board charged at its highest value, with the
+request to pay, and with notice that in failure of immediate payment the
+amount would be charged upon his pay-roll. This treatment disgusted the
+Colonel, who is a gentleman of high tone and the kindliest feelings, and
+angered by the heartlessness that denied him proper shelter for his
+sick, now increased to a number frightfully large, with a heavy share of
+mortality, he cut red-tape, sent over a detail to the house, had it
+cleansed of Rebel filth, and filled it with the sick. The poor fellows
+were hardly comfortable in their new quarters, before an order came from
+Division Head-quarters for their immediate removal.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have no place to take them to; they are sick, and must be under
+shelter,' was the Colonel's reply.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Commanding General of the Division orders their instant removal,'
+was the order that followed.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Commanding General of Division must take the responsibility of
+their removal on his own head,' was the spirited reply of the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"That evening towards sunset, the second edition of Old Pigeon, 'Squab,'
+as the boys called him, rode up with the air of 'one having authority,'
+and in a conceited manner informed the Colonel that the General
+commanding the Division had directed him to place him under arrest. Now
+these things I know to be facts. I took pains to inform myself."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 114 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></p><p>The Lieutenant's story elicited many ejaculations of contempt for the
+heartlessness of some in high places; but they were cut short by the
+Captain's stating that he knew the circumstances to be true, and that
+Old Pigeon stated the Colonel should wait for his hospital tents, the
+requisition for which had been sent up months before. It was shelved in
+some pigeon-hole, and the Colonel was to stand by and see his men sicken
+and die, while a rebel farmer's house near by would have saved many of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"But we're in for it, boys. No use of talking. Obedience is lesson No. 1
+of the soldier, and you know that we must not 'mutter or murmur' against
+our Commanding General, which position Old Pigey so often reminds us he
+holds. The old fellow half suspects that if he didn't, we'd forget it
+from day to day; for Lord knows there is nothing about the man but his
+position to make any one remember it. Now I am determined to have some
+sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Sleep! such a night as this?" said one of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course; we'll need it to-morrow, and an old soldier ought to be able
+to sleep anywhere, in any kind of weather."</p>
+
+<p>The Captain left. There was a partial dispersing of the crowd, but many
+a poor fellow shivered in that pelting rain the night long.</p>
+
+<p>The morning found the enemy at a respectful distance, and the homeward
+route was quietly resumed. Late in the afternoon the advance entered
+Shepherdstown. At this time the rear was shelled vigorously, and as the
+troops continued their passage through the town cavalry charges were
+made upon both sides. That only ford was again crossed, and the evening
+was well advanced ere the troops regained their camps.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 115 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p><p>A day later, and the Dailies, through their respective reporters, told
+an astonished public how the brilliant and daring reconnoissance had
+discovered qualities of great generalship in a man who but a short time
+before had figured as a quiet literary man in the seclusion of an
+office.</p>
+
+<p>"And, be jabers," said our little Irish Corporal, on hearing it read,
+"Uncle Sam would have gained by paying him to stay in that office."</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 116 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Departure from Sharpsburg Camp&mdash;The Old Woman of Sandy Hook&mdash;Harper's
+Ferry&mdash;South sewing Dragon's Teeth by shedding Old John's Blood&mdash;The
+Dutch Doctor and the Boar&mdash;Beauties of Tobacco&mdash;Camp Life on the
+Character&mdash;Patrick, Brother to the Little Corporal&mdash;General Patterson no
+Irishman&mdash;Guarding a Potatoe Patch in Dixie&mdash;The Preacher Lieutenant on
+Emancipation&mdash;Inspection and the Exhorting Colonel&mdash;The Scotch Tailor on
+Military Matters.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>October was drawing to a close rapidly, when, at last, after repeated
+false alarms, the actual movement of the army commenced. No one, unless
+himself an old campaigner, can appreciate the feelings of the soldier at
+the breaking up of camp. Anxious for a change of scenery as he may be,
+the eye will linger upon each familiar spot, the quarters, the parade
+ground, and rocky bluff and wooded knoll, until memory's impress bears
+the lasting distinctness of a lifetime. Those leaving could not banish
+from their minds, even if disposed, the thought that, although but a
+temporary sojourn for them, it had proved to be the last resting-place
+of many of their comrades. The hospital, more dreaded than the field,
+had contributed its share to the mounds that dotted the hills from the
+strife of Antietam.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"There is not an atom of this earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But once was living man&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 117 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p><p>was a day dream, doubtless, of the poetic boy of eighteen; but how
+suggestive it becomes, when we consider how many thousands and hundreds
+of thousands of mounds rising upon every hill in the border States,
+attest devotion to the cause of the Union, or treason, in this foulest
+of Rebellions.</p>
+
+<p>The route lay, after passing the village of Sharpsburg, through a narrow
+valley, lying cosily between the spurs of two ridges that appeared to
+terminate at the Ferry. On either hand the evidences of the occupation
+of the country by a large army were abundant. Fences torn down, ground
+trampled, and fields destitute of herbage. The road bordering the canal,
+along which is built the straggling village of Sandy Hook, was crowded
+with the long wagon trains of the different Corps. A soldier could as
+readily distinguish the Staff from the Regimental wagons, as the Staff
+themselves from Regimental officers. The slick, well fed appearance of
+the horses or mules of Staff teams, usually six in number, owing to
+abundance of forage and half <i>loaded</i> wagons, were in striking contrast
+with the four half fed, hide-bound beasts usually attached to the
+overloaded Regimental wagons. Order after order for the reduction of
+baggage, that would reduce field officers to a small valise apiece,
+while many line officers would be compelled to march without a change of
+clothing, did not appear to lessen the length of Staff trains. That the
+transportation was unnecessarily extensive, cannot be doubted. That the
+heaviest reduction could have been made with Head-quarter trains, is
+equally true.</p>
+
+<p>"Grey coats one day and blue coats the next," said an old woman clad in
+homespun grey, who came out of a low frame house as the troops slowly
+made their way past the teams through the village of Sandy Hook.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 118 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p><p>"Right on this rock is where General Jackson rested hisself," continued
+the old woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Were there many Rebs about?" inquired one of the men.</p>
+
+<p>"Right smart of them, I reckon;" replied the old woman; "but Lord! what
+a lookin' set of critters. Elbows and knees out; many of them hadn't
+shoes, and half of them that had had their toes out. You boys are
+dandies to them. And tired too, and hungry. Gracious! the poor fellows,
+when their officers weren't about, would beg for anything almost to eat.
+Why, my daughter Sal saw them at the soap-fat barrel! They said they
+were nearly marched and starved to death. And their officers didn't look
+much better. Lord! it looks like a pic-nic party to see you blue coats,
+with your long strings of wagons, and all your other fixins. You take
+good care of your bellies, the way you haul the crackers and bacon. Old
+Jackson never waits for wagons. That's the way he gets around you so
+often."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, old woman," roared out one of the men, "you had better dry
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and he'll get around you again," continued the old woman in a
+louder key. "You think you're going to bag him, do you. You're some on
+baggin'; but he'll give you three days' start and beat you down the
+valley. They acted like gentlemen, too, didn't touch a thing without
+leave, and you fellows have robbed me of all I have."</p>
+
+<p>"They were in 'My Maryland,' and wanted to get the people all straight,"
+suggested one of the boys.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady did not take the hint, but kept on berating the fresh men
+as they passed&mdash;taunting them by disparaging comparison with the Rebel
+troops. A neighbor, by informing them of the fact of her <!-- Page 119 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>having two
+sons in the Rebel service, imparted the secret of her interest.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>And there is the Ferry, so often pictured, or attempted to be, by pen
+and pencil. Either art has failed, and will fail, to do justice to that
+sublimely grand mountain scenery. Not quite three years ago, an iron old
+man, who perished with the heroism of a Spartan, or rather, to be just,
+the faith of a Christian; but little more than a year in advance of the
+dawn of the day of his hope, centred upon this spot the eyes of a
+continent. A crazy fanatic, was the cry, but&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Thy scales, Mortality, are just<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To all that pass away."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Time will reveal that it was not the freak of a madman, but rather a
+step in the grand progress of universal emancipation, and that Old John
+had foundations for his purposed campaign, quite as substantial as those
+upon which better starred enterprises have succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor, Massa, if Old John had only had these men," said a wench to one of
+Patterson's Captains, as he paused for a few moments while drilling his
+command at Charlestown, during that fruitless campaign, so formidable in
+preparation, and so much more disgraceful than that of Old John in its
+termination, for the latter, in his dying heroism, won the admiration of
+a world.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what could Old John have done with them?" replied the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Golly, Massa," said the wench, with a knowing grin; "he would have
+walked right through Virginny, and he'd have had plenty of help too. I
+knows, many a nigger about here that didn't say nuthin', would have
+jined him."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 120 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p><p>"Why didn't they join him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lor, Massa, they didn't know it in time. Hadn't any chance. Massa
+wanted us to go see him hung; but only the youngsters went. We colored
+pussons neber forget Old John. No sah!"</p>
+
+<p>The men wound their way as best they could beneath the precipitous and
+towering rocks of the Maryland Heights, through the teams that blocked
+up the road, and a short distance above the Railroad Bridge, filed to
+the left, and crossed upon the pontoons. As they passed the Engine
+House, the utmost endeavors of the officers could not prevent a bulge to
+the right, so great was the anxiety to see the scene of Old John's
+heroic but hopeless contest. Denounced by pro-slavery zealots as a
+murderer, by the community at large as a fanatic, who fifty years hence
+will deny him honorable place in the list of martyrs for the cause of
+eternal truth!</p>
+
+<p>The town itself was almost a mass of ruins; both sides, at various
+stages of the war, having endeavored to effect its destruction. Another
+pontoon bridge was crossed, bridging the Shenandoah&mdash;sparkling on its
+rocky bed&mdash;the <i>Dancing Water</i>, as termed by the Aborigines, with their
+customary graceful appropriateness. To one fond of mountain scenery, and
+who is not? the winding road that follows the Shenandoah to its
+junction, then charmingly bends to the course of the Potomac, is
+intensely interesting. But why should an humble writer weary the
+reader's patience by expatiating upon scenery, the sight of which
+Jefferson declared well worth a visit across the Atlantic, at a day when
+such visits were tedious three month affairs, and uncertain at that? War
+now adds a bristling horror to the shaggy mountain tops, and from the
+hoarse throats of heavy cannon often "leap from rock <!-- Page 121 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>to rock the
+beetling crags among" well executed counterfeits of "live thunder."</p>
+
+<p>The Potomac is followed but a short distance, the road winding by an
+easy ascent up the mountain ridge, and descending as easily into a
+narrow and fruitful valley. In this valley, four miles from the Ferry, a
+halt was ordered, and the Division rested for the night and succeeding
+day, in a large and well sodded field.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," said our Brigadier, in a sly, good-humored way, as he rode
+up to the field officers of the Regiment, "the field upon which you are
+encamped, and all the land, almost as far as you can see, on the left of
+yon fence, belong to a Rebel now holding the rank of Major in the Rebel
+service. All I need say, I suppose, gentlemen," and the General left to
+communicate the important information to the other Regiments of the
+Brigade. As a fine flock of sheep, some young cattle, a drove of porkers
+that from a rear view gave promise of prime Virginia hams, and sundry
+flocks of chickens, had been espied as the men marched into the field,
+the General's remarks were eminently practical and suggestive.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie, what's the state of the larder?" said the Major, with his
+usual thoughtfulness, addressing the cheerful mess cook.</p>
+
+<p>"Some boiled pork and crackers. Poor show, sir!" Such fare, after a hard
+day's march, in sight of a living paradise of beef, mutton, pork, and
+poultry, would have been perfectly inexcusable; and forthwith, the
+Major, "the little Dutch Doctor," and a short, stoutly-built Lieutenant,
+all armed to the teeth, started off to reconnoitre, and ascertain in
+what position the Rebel property was posted. As they went they canvassed
+the respective merits of beef, mutton, pork and poultry, <!-- Page 122 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>until a short
+grunt from a porker, as he crossed the Doctor's path, ended the
+discussion. The Major and Lieutenant cocked their pistols, but withheld
+firing, as they saw the Doctor prostrate, holding by both hands the hind
+leg of a patriarch of the flock.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Heavens! we don't want that old boar!" cried out at once both the
+Major and Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"Goot meat, make strong, goot for health, very," said the Doctor,
+holding on with the grasp of a vice, while the boar fairly dragged him,
+face to the ground, "after the manner of all creeping things." The
+Doctor was in a fix. Help his companions would not give. He could not
+hold the boar by one hand alone. After being considerably bruised, he
+was compelled to release his hold, to his intense disgust, which he
+evinced as he raised himself up, puffing like a porpoise, by
+gesticulating furiously, and muttering a jargon in which the only thing
+intelligible was the oft-repeated word, "tam." A well-directed shot from
+the Major, shortly afterwards, brought down a royal "Virginia mutton,"
+as the camp phrase is. Another from the Lieutenant grazed the rear of a
+fine young porker's ham; but considerable firing, a long chase, and many
+ludicrous falls occurred, before that pig was tightly gripped between
+the legs of the Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>The expedition was so successful that the aid of some privates was
+called in to help carry to quarters the rich spoils of the chase. As for
+the Doctor,&mdash;after the refusal of assistance in his struggle, he walked
+homeward in stately but offended dignity, and shocked the Chaplain, as
+he was occasionally in the habit of doing, by still muttering "tam."</p>
+
+<p>A person enjoying the comforts of home, testy as to the broiling of a
+mutton-chop perhaps, for real, unalloyed enjoyment of appetite should
+form one of a <!-- Page 123 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>camp circle, toasting, at a blazing fire, as the shades
+of evening gather round, steaks freshly cut with a camp-knife from flesh
+that quivered with remaining life but a moment before, assisting its
+digestion by fried hardees, and washing both down by coffee innocent of
+cream. That is a feast, as every old campaigner will testify; but to be
+properly appreciated a good appetite is all essential. To attain that,
+should other resources fail, the writer can confidently recommend a
+march, say of about fifteen miles, over rough or dusty roads.</p>
+
+<p>And then, as the appetites of the men are sated by the hardy provender
+of Uncle Sam, varied, as in this instance, by Virginia venison, and they
+respectively fall back and take to</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Sublime Tobacco! glorious in a pipe;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>what more pleasant than the discussion of the doings of the day, or of
+the times, the recital of oft-repeated and ever-gaining yarns, or the
+heart-stirring strains of national ballads, while each countenance is
+lit with the ever-varying glow of the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this evening not only Head-quarters but the Regiment was exultant
+in the feast upon the fat of a rebellious land. To add to their comfort
+several large stacks of hay and straw had been deprived of their fair
+proportions, and preparations had been made for the enjoyment of rest
+upon beds that kings would envy, could they but have the sleepers' sound
+repose.</p>
+
+<p>The morrow had been set apart as a day of rest&mdash;a fact known to the
+Regiment, and their fireside enjoyment was accordingly prolonged.</p>
+
+<p>The camp, more than any other position in life, develops the greatest
+inconsistencies in poor human nature. The grumbler of the day's march is
+very frequently <!-- Page 124 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>the joker of the bivouac. The worse, at the expense of
+man's better qualities, are rapidly strengthened, and the least particle
+of selfishness, however concealed by a generous nature at the period of
+enlistment, fearfully increases its power with every day of service. The
+writer remembers well a small, slightly-built, bow-legged fellow, who
+would murmur without ceasing upon the route, continually torment his
+officers for privilege to fall out of ranks to adjust his knapsack,
+fasten a belt, or some such like purpose, who, on the halt, would amuse
+his comrades for hours in performing gymnastic feats upon out-spread
+blankets. Another, who at home flourished deservedly under the sobriquet
+of "Clever Billy," became, in a few brief months of service, the most
+surly, snappish, and selfish of his mess.</p>
+
+<p>Pipe in mouth, their troubles are puffed away in the gracefully
+ascending smoke. Many a non-user of the weed envies in moody silence the
+perfect satisfaction resting upon the features of his comrade thus
+engaged. Non-users are becoming rare birds in the army. So universal is
+the habit, that the pipe appears to belong to the equipment, and the
+tobacco-pouch, suspended from a button-hole of the blouse, is so
+generally worn that one would suppose it to have been prescribed by the
+President as part of the uniform.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd gathered about the Head-quarters had largely increased, and
+while luxuriating upon the straw, time passed merrily. The Colonel, who
+never let an opportunity to improve the discipline of his command pass
+unimproved, seized the occasion of the presence of a large number of
+officers to impress upon them the necessity of greater control of the
+men upon the march. The easy, open, but orderly route-step of the
+Regulars was alluded to&mdash;their occupying the <!-- Page 125 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>road alone, and not spread
+out and straggling like a drove of cattle. A stranger seeing our
+Volunteers upon the march would not give them credit for the soldierly
+qualities they really possess. Curiosity, so rampant in the Yankee,
+tempts him continually to wander from the ranks to one or other side of
+the road.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Colonel," said a tall Lieutenant, "the Regulars look prim and
+march well, but they have done little fighting, as yet, in this Army of
+the Potomac."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget the Peninsula," replied the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there they were caught unexpectedly, and forced into it. In this
+Corps they are always in reserve; and that's what their officers
+like,&mdash;everything in reserve but pay and promotion. It is rather
+doubtful whether they will fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Ov coorse they'll fight," said the little Irish Corporal, half rising
+from his straw on the outskirts of the crowd; "Ov coorse they will.
+They're nearly all my own countrymen. I know slathers of them; and did
+you iver in your born days know an Irishman that wouldn't fight,
+anywhere, any time, and for anything, if he had anybody to fight?"</p>
+
+<p>"And a quart of whiskey in him," interrupts the Adjutant. "As Burns says
+of the Scotch&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Wi' Tippeny they fear nae evil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Wi' Usquebagh they'll face the Devil.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Now, don't be comparing an Irishman, if you plaze, Adjutant, to a
+scratch-back Scotchman. The raal Irishman has fire enough in his bluid;
+but there's no denying a glass of potheen is the stuff to regulate it.
+Talk about Rigulars or Volunteers fighting;&mdash;it's the officers must do
+their duty, and there's no fear thin of the men."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 126 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p><p>"What did you enlist for, anyway, Terence?" broke in a Second
+Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"It's aisy seeing that it wasn't for a Lieutenant's pay," retorted
+Terence, to the amusement of the crowd, and then, as earnestness
+gathered upon his countenance, he continued: "I enlisted for revinge,
+and there's little prospect of my seeing a chance for it."</p>
+
+<p>"For revenge?" said several.</p>
+
+<p>"Yis, for revinge. I had worked early and late at a liv'ry stable, like
+a nagur, to pay the passage money of my only brother to this country.
+Faith, he was a broth of a boy, the pride of all the McCarthy's,"&mdash;tears
+welled in his eyes as he continued,&mdash;"just three years younger than
+mysilf, a light, ruddy, nately put togither lad as iver left the bogs;
+and talk about fightin'!&mdash;the divil was niver in him but in a fight, and
+thin you'd think he was all divil. That was Patrick's sport, and fight
+he would, ivery chance, from the time whin he was a bit of a lad, ten
+years ould, and bunged the ould schoolteacher's eyes in the parish
+school-house. Will, he got a good berth in a saloon in the Bowery, where
+they used Patrick in claning out the customers whin they got noisy, and
+he'd do it nately too, to the satisfaction of his employer. He did well
+till a recruiting Sergeant&mdash;bad luck to him&mdash;that knew the McCarthys in
+the ould country, found him out, and they drank and talked about ould
+times, and the Sergeant tould him that the army was the place for
+Irishmen,&mdash;that there would be lots of fightin'. The chance of a fight
+took Patrick, and nixt day he left the city in a blouse, as Fourth
+Corporal in an Irish Rigiment, and a prouder looking chappie, as his own
+Captain tould me, niver marched down Broadway. And thin to think he was
+murthered by my own Gineral."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 127 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p><p>"Who? How was that?" interrupted half a dozen at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Gineral Patterson, you see, to be shure."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Terence," broke in the Lieutenant, "you shouldn't be so hard upon
+General Patterson; he's of an Irish family."</p>
+
+<p>"The Gineral an Irishman! Niver! Of an Irish family! must have been
+hundreds of years back, and the bluid spoiled long before it got into
+his veins, by bad whiskey or something worse. It takes the raal potheen,
+that smacks of the smoke of the still, to keep up the bluid of an
+Irishman. Rot-gut would ruin St. Patrick himself if he were alive and
+could be got to taste it. Gineral Patterson an Irishman! no, sir; or
+there would have been bluidy noses at Bunker's Hill or Winchester, and
+that would have saved some at Bull Run."</p>
+
+<p>"On with your story, Terence," said the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Beggin' your pardon, there's no story about it,&mdash;the blissid truth,
+ivery word of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Will, you see, while our ould Colonel, under the Gineral's orders, had
+me guarding a pratie patch&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Set an Irishman to guard a potato patch!" laughed the Second
+Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't much use," said Terence, smiling, "for they disappeared the
+first night, and the slim college student that was Sergeant of that
+relief was put under guard for telling the officer of the guard, next
+morning, that there had been a heavy dew that night, and it evaporated
+so fast that it took the praties along. We lived on praties next day,
+but the poor Sergeant had to foot the bill.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as I was going on to say, while I was helping guard a pratie
+patch, an ice-house, corn-crib, smoke-house, and other such things that
+were near <!-- Page 128 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>our camp ground, and that belonged to a Rebel Colonel under
+Johnston;&mdash;Johnston himself was staling away with all his army to help
+fight the battle of Bull Run. Patrick&mdash;pace to his sowl&mdash;was in that
+battle and fought like a tiger, barrin' that he would have done better,
+as his Captain tould me, if he hadn't forgot the balls in his
+cartridge-box, and took to his musket like a shelaleh all day long.
+Patrick's regiment belonged to a Brigade that was ordered to keep
+Johnston in check, and there stood Patrick in line, like a true lad as
+he was, clubbing back the Butternuts, striking them right and
+left&mdash;maybe the fellows belonged to this same Rebel Colonel's
+regiment&mdash;until a round shot struck him full in the breast, knocking the
+heart out of as true an Irishman as iver lived, and killing dead the
+flower of the McCarthys.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know it till we got to Baltimore, and thin whin I riflicted
+how the poor boy marched up to fight the bluidy Rebels, and how they
+killed him, my own brother, while I&mdash;I, who would have given my right
+hand to save him,&mdash;yis," said Terence, rising, and tears streaming from
+his eyes, "would have waded through fire and bluid to help the darlin',
+the pride of his mother,&mdash;I was guarding a Rebel Colonel's property,
+whin the whole of us, if we had fought Johnston, as we ought to have
+done, might have kept him back and saved our army, and that would have
+saved me my brother. And thin whin I remimbered how thick the Gineral
+was with the Rebel gentry, and how fine ladies with the divil in their
+eyes bowed to him in Charlestown, and spit at and cocked up their noses
+at us soldiers, while their husbands were off, maybe, murthering my
+brother; and how the Gineral, proud as a paycock on his prancing
+chestnut sorrel, <!-- Page 129 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>tould us in the meadow that Johnston was too strong
+for us to attack, but that if he would come out from behind his big guns
+the Gineral would lay his body on the sod before he'd lave it, whin he
+intended his body to lie on a soft bed the rest of his life, and how he
+said and did all this while our men, and my brother among them, were
+being murthered by this same Johnston that he was sent to hould back,&mdash;I
+couldn't keep down my Irish bluid. I cursed him and all his tribe by all
+the Saints from St. Peter to St. Patrick, until good ould Father Mahan
+tould me, whin I confessed, that he was afraid I would swear my own sowl
+away, and keep Patrick in Purgatory; and the Father tould me that I
+should lave off cursin' Patterson, for the Americans thimselves would
+attend to that, and take to fighting the Rebels for revinge; and he said
+by way of incouragement that at the same time I'd be sarving God and my
+adopted country. And here I am, under another safe Commander. Four
+months and no fight,&mdash;nearly up to the ould First, that sarved three
+months without sight of a Rebel, barrin' he was a prisoner, or in
+citizen dress, like some we have left behind us."</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, Terence tells the truth about Patterson's movements," said the
+tall Lieutenant. "The day before we left we were ordered to be ready to
+move in the morning, with three days' cooked rations. We were told that
+our Regiment was assigned a place in the advance, and it was
+semi-officially rumored that a flank attack would be made upon
+Winchester. At this day the whole affair appears ridiculous, as Johnston
+had at that very time left Winchester, leaving only a trifling show of
+force, and he never, at his best, had a force equal to Patterson's. Half
+of his troops were the raw country militia. But we under-officers <!-- Page 130 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>were
+none the wiser. It was rumored that Bill McMullen's Rangers had found
+charts that informed the General of the extent and strength of the Rebel
+works and muster-rolls, that showed his force to be over 50,000. That
+those works had no existence to the extent alleged, and that the
+muster-rolls were false, are now well known. But that night it was all
+dead earnest with us. Rations were cooked and the most thorough
+preparations made for the expected work of the morrow. Sunrise saw the
+old First in line, ready for the move. Eight o'clock came; no move,
+Nine&mdash;Ten, and yet no move. Arms had been stacked, and the men lounged
+lazily about the stacks. Eagle eyes scanned the surrounding country to
+ascertain what other Brigades were doing. At length troops were seen in
+motion, but the head of the column was turned towards the Ferry. 'What
+does this mean?' was the inquiry that hastily ran from man to man; and
+still they marched towards the Ferry. By and by an aide-de-camp directed
+our Brigade to fall into the column, and we then discovered that the
+whole army was in line of march for the Ferry, with a formidable
+rear-guard to protect it from an enemy then triumphing at Bull Run.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Patterson's inertness, to speak of it tenderly, cost the country
+much blood, millions of money, and a record of disgrace; but it gave a
+Regiment of Massachusetts Yankees opportunity to whittle up for their
+home cabinets of curiosities a large pile of walnut timber which had
+formed John Brown's scaffold, and to make extensive inroads in prying
+with their bayonets from the walls of the jail in which he had been
+confined pieces of stone and mortar. Guards were put upon the Court
+House in which old John heard his doom with the dignity of a Cato, at an
+early <!-- Page 131 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>date, or it would have been hewn to pieces. A fine crop of corn
+in full leaf was growing upon the field of execution, and for a space of
+ten feet from the road-side the leaves had been culled for careful
+preservation in knapsacks. The boys had the spirit. Their Commander
+lacked capacity or will to give it effect. A beggarly excuse was set up
+after the campaign was over,&mdash;that the time of service of many of the
+Regiments was about expiring, and that the men would not re&euml;nlist,&mdash;not
+only beggarly, but false. The great mass volunteered to remain as it
+was, with no prospect of service ahead. All would have stayed had the
+General shown any disposition for active work, or made them promise of a
+fight."</p>
+
+<p>"Golly," said a tall, raw-boned Darkie, showing his ivories to a crowd
+of like color about him, as the fine band of the Fencibles played in
+front of the General's Head-quarters. "Dese Union boys beat de
+Mississippi fellurs all hollur playing Dixie."</p>
+
+<p>Hardly a face was to be seen upon the streets, but those of these
+friendly blacks. They thronged about the camps, to be repulsed by
+stringent orders at all quarters. Property they were, reasoned the
+commander, and property must be respected. And it was; even pump handles
+were tied down and placed under guard. Oh! that a Ben Butler had then
+been in command, to have pronounced this living property contraband of
+war, and by that sharp dodge of a pro-slavery Democrat, to have given
+Uncle Sam the services of this property. Depend upon it, that would have
+ended campaigning in the valley of the Shenandoah, that store-house of
+Rebel supplies, as it has turned out to be; supplies too, gathered and
+kept up by the negroes that Patterson so carefully excluded from his
+lines.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 132 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p><p>"And would have saved us this march," says the Colonel, "a goose chase
+at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and had the policy of using the negro been general at the
+commencement of this Rebellion, troops would not be in the field at this
+day," responded the Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do they not now, come boldly out and acknowledge that slavery is a
+curse to any nation?" said the Preacher Lieutenant. "It caused the
+Rebellion, and its downfall would be the Rebellion's certain and speedy
+death. Thousands of years ago, the Almighty cursed with plagues a proud
+people for refusing to break the bonds of the slave. The day of miracles
+is past. But war, desolating war, is the scourge with which He punishes
+our country. The curse of blood is upon the land; by blood must it be
+expiated. We in the North have been guilty, in common with the whole
+country, in tolerating, aiding, and abetting the evil. We must have our
+proportion of punishment. Why cannot the whole country meet the issue
+boldly as one man, and atone for past offence by unanimity in the
+abolition of the evil?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the nigger again," said his Junior Lieutenant, assuming, as he
+spoke, an oratorical attitude. "Why do you not go on and talk about them
+working out their own salvation, with muskets on their shoulders and
+bayonets by their sides, and with fear and trembling too, I have no
+doubt it would be. Carry out your Scripture parallels. Tell how the
+walls of Jericho fell by horns taken from the woolly heads of rams; but
+now that miracles are no more, how the walls of this Jericho of Rebeldom
+are destined to fall before the well-directed butting of the woolly
+heads themselves. You don't ride your hobby with a stiff rein to-night,
+Lieutenant."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 133 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p><p>The taunting air and strained comparison of the Lieutenant enlivened the
+crowd, but did not in the least affect the Senior, who calmly replied:</p>
+
+<p>"If our Government does not arm the negro on the basis of freedom, the
+Rebels in their desperation will, and although we have the negro
+sympathy, we may lose it through delay and inattention, and in that
+event, prepare for years of conflict. The negroes, at the outset of this
+Rebellion, were ripe for the contest. Armies of thousands of them might
+have been in the field to-day. Now the President's Proclamation finds
+them removed within interior Rebel lines, and to furnish them arms, will
+first cost severe contests with the Rebels themselves."</p>
+
+<p>The toil of the day and the drowsiness caused by huge meals, gradually
+dispersed the crowd; but the discussion was continued in quarters by the
+various messes, until their actual time of retiring.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Inspection! inspection!" said the Adjutant, on the succeeding
+afternoon, to the Lieutenant-Colonel for the time being in command of
+the Regiment, handing him, at the same time, an order for immediate
+inspection. "Six inspections in two weeks before marching," continued
+the Adjutant, "and another after a day's march. I wonder whether this
+Grand Army of the Potomac wouldn't halt when about going into battle, to
+see whether the men had their shoe-strings tied?"</p>
+
+<p>The Adjutant had barely ceased, when the Inspecting officer, the ranking
+Colonel of the Brigade, detailed specially for the duty, made his
+appearance. He was a stout, full-faced man of fifty or upwards, with an
+odd mixture in his manner of piety and pretension. Report had it that
+his previous life had been <!-- Page 134 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>one of change,&mdash;stock-jobber, note-shaver,
+temperance lecturer, and exhorter&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"All things by turns, and nothing long."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The latter quality remained with him, and it was a rare chance that he
+could pass a crowd of his men without bringing it into play. His
+"talks," as the boys called them, were more admired than his tactics,
+and from their tone of friendly familiarity, he was called by the
+fatherly title of "Pap" by his Regiment, and known by that designation
+throughout the Brigade.</p>
+
+<p>The Regiment was rapidly formed for inspection, and after passing
+through the ranks of the first Company, the Colonel pompously presented
+himself before its centre, and with sober tones and solemn look,
+delivered himself as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, have your hearts right," the Colonel clapping, at the same time,
+his right hand over his diaphragm. "If your hearts are right your
+muskets will be bright." The men stared, the movement not being laid
+down in the Regulations, and not exactly understanding the connexion
+between the heart and a clean musket; but the Colonel continued, "the
+heart is like the mainspring of a watch, if it beats right, the whole
+man and all about him will be right. There is no danger of our failing
+in this war, boys. We have a good cause to put our hearts in. The Rebels
+have a bad cause, and their hearts cannot be right in it. Good hearts
+make brave men, brave men win the battles. That's the reason, boys, why
+we'll succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't see it!" sang out some irreverent fellow in the rear rank.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel didn't take the hint; but catching at the remark continued,
+"You do not need to see it, <!-- Page 135 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>boys, you can feel whether your heart is
+right." This provoked a smile on the faces of the more intelligent of
+the officers and men, which the Colonel noticed. "No laughing matter,
+boys," he said emphatically, at the same time earnestly gesticulating,
+"your lives, your country, and your honor depend upon right hearts." And
+thus the old Colonel exhorted each Company previous to its dismissal,
+amusing some and mystifying others. The heart was his theme, and time or
+place, a court-martial or a review, did not prevent the introduction of
+his platitudes.</p>
+
+<p>Said the Major, after inspection, "The Colonel, in the prominence he
+gives the heart in its control of military affairs, rather reverses a
+sentiment I once heard advanced by a little Scotch tailor, who had just
+been elected a militia colonel."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have it, Major," said the Adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>"The little Scotchman," continued the Major, "had been a notorious
+drunkard and profane swearer. Through the efforts of a travelling
+Evangelist, he became converted and joined a prominent denomination. His
+conversion was a remarkable instance, and gave him rapid promotion and a
+prominent position in the church. While at his height, through some
+scheme of the devil, I suppose, he was elected colonel of militia. The
+elevation overcame him. Treat he must and treat he did, and to satisfy
+the admiring crowd in front of the bar drank himself, until reason left,
+preceded by piety, and his old vice of profanity returned, with
+seven-fold virulence. He was discovered by a brother of the church,
+steadying himself by the railing of the bar, and rehearsing, amid
+volleys of oaths, the fragments that remained in his memory of an old
+Fourth of July speech. 'Brother,' said his fellow church-member, as he
+gently nudged his arm. <!-- Page 136 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>'Brother!' in a louder key, and with a more
+vigorous nudge, 'have you forgotten your sacred obligations to the
+church, your position as a&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'The church!' echoed the tailor, all the blood of the MacGregor rising
+in his boots, with an oath that shocked the brother out of all
+hope&mdash;'What's the church to military matters?'"</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 137 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Snicker's Gap&mdash;Private Harry on the "Anaconda"&mdash;Not inclined to turn
+Boot-Black&mdash;"Oh! why did you go for a Soldier?"&mdash;The
+ex-News-Boy&mdash;Pigeon-hole Generalship on the March&mdash;The Valley of the
+Shenandoah&mdash;A Flesh Carnival&mdash;The Dutch Doctor on a Horse-dicker&mdash;An Old
+Rebel, and how he parted with his Apple-Brandy&mdash;Toasting the
+"Union"&mdash;Spruce Retreats.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>The movement down the Valley was one of those at that time popular
+"bagging" movements, peculiar to the Grand Army of the Potomac, and in
+their style of execution, or to speak correctly, intended execution&mdash;for
+the absence of that quality has rendered them ridiculous&mdash;original with
+its Commander. Semi-official reports, industriously circulated from the
+gold-striped Staff to the blue-striped Field Officer, and by the latter
+whispered in confidence in the anxious ears of officers of the line, and
+again transferred in increasing volume to the subs, and by them in
+knowing confidence to curious privates, had it that the principal rebel
+force would be hemmed in, in the Valley of the Shenandoah, by our
+obtaining command of the Gaps, and then we would be nearest their
+Capital in a direct line&mdash;we would compel them to fight us, where, when,
+and how we pleased, or else <!-- Page 138 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>beat them in a race to Richmond, and
+then&mdash;&mdash;. The reader must imagine happy results that could not
+consistently be expected, while to gain the same destination over
+equidistant and equally good roads, Strategy moved by comparatively slow
+marches and easy halts, while Desperation strained every nerve, with
+rattling batteries and almost running ranks.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Lieutenant, if that's so," alluding to the purpose of their march,
+"why are we halting here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Our troops block up the roads, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"We could march in the fields," rejoined the anxious private, "by the
+road-side; they are open and firm."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll see, Harry, in a day or two, what it all amounts to. May be the
+'Anaconda' that is to smash out the rebellion, is making another turn,
+or 'taking in a reef,' as the Colonel says."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," rejoined the Private, "I have endeavored to book myself up, as
+far as my advantages would allow, in our army movements; and the nearest
+approach to anything like an anaconda, that I can see or hear of, is
+that infernal Red-tape worm that is strangling the soul out of the army.
+What inexcusable nonsense to attempt to apply to an immense army in time
+of war, such as we have now in the field, the needless, petty
+pigeon-hole details that regulated ten thousand men on a peace
+establishment. And to carry them out, look how many valuable officers,
+or officers who ought to be valuable, from the expense Uncle Sam has
+been at to give them educational advantages, are doing clerkly
+duty&mdash;that civilians, our business men, our accountants, could as well,
+if not better, attend to&mdash;in the offices of the Departments at
+Washington, in the Commissary and Quarter-Master's
+Departments,&mdash;handling quills and cheese-knives instead of swords, and
+never giving <!-- Page 139 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>'the villainous smell of saltpetre' the slightest chance
+'to come betwixt the wind and their nobility.'"</p>
+
+<p>Harry, at the time of his volunteering was an associate editor of a well
+established and ably conducted country newspaper. He had thrown himself
+with successful energy into the formation of the regiment to which he
+belonged. A prominent position was proffered him, but he sturdily
+refused any place but the ranks, alleging that he had never drilled a
+day in his life, and particularly insisting that those who had seen
+service and were somewhat skilled in the tactics, although many of them
+were far his inferiors in intelligence, should occupy the offices. From
+his gentlemanly deportment and ability he was on familiar terms with the
+officers, and popular among the men. Withal, he was a finely formed,
+soldierly-looking man. In the early part of his service he was reserved
+in his comments upon the conduct of the war, and considered, as he was
+in fact, conservative,&mdash;setting the best possible example of
+taciturnity, subordinate to the wisdom of his superiors.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, you have been detailed as a clerk about Brigade Head Quarters,"
+said the Orderly Sergeant of his company, one morning, after he had been
+in service about two months.</p>
+
+<p>Harry did not like the separation from his Company in the least, but
+notwithstanding, quietly reported for duty. Several days of desk
+drudgery, most laborious to one fresh from out-door exercise, had
+passed, when one morning about eight o'clock, a conceited coxcomb of an
+aid, in slippers, entered the office-tent, and holding a pair of muddy
+boots up, with an air of matter-of-course authority&mdash;ordered Harry to
+blacken them, telling him at the same time, <!-- Page 140 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>in a milder and lower tone,
+that black Jim the cook had the brush and blackening.</p>
+
+<p>"What, sir?" said Harry, rising like a rocket, his Saxon blood mounting
+to the very roots of his red hair.</p>
+
+<p>"I order you to black those boots, sir," was the repeated and more
+insolent command.</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll see you d&mdash;&mdash;d first," retorted Harry, doubling his fist.</p>
+
+<p>The aid not liking the furious flush upon Harry's face, with wise
+discretion backed out, muttering after he was fairly outside of the
+tent, something about a report to the Brigadier. Report he did, and very
+shortly after there was a vacancy in his position upon the Staff of that
+Officer. Harry, at his own request, was in the course of a week relieved
+from duty, and restored to his Company. Ever after he had a tongue.</p>
+
+<p>The reply of the Lieutenant to Harry's remarks has all this time been in
+abeyance, however.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry," said that officer, "we must follow the stars without murmuring
+or muttering against the judgment of superiors,&mdash;but one can't help
+surmising, and," the Lieutenant had half mechanically added when the
+Sergeant-Major saluted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the Captain, Lieutenant?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not about, at present."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," continued the Sergeant, "reveille at four, and in line at five
+in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>Those beds of thickly littered straw were hard to leave in the chill
+mist of the morning. The warning notes of the reveille trilling in
+sweetest melody from the fife of the accomplished fife-major,
+accompanied by the slumber-ending rattle of the drum, admitted of no
+alternative. Many a brave boy as he stood in line that morning, ready
+for the march, the first sparkle of sunrise glistening upon his bayonet,
+wondered <!-- Page 141 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>whether father or mother, sister or brother, yet in their
+slumbers, doubtless, in the dear old homestead, knew that the army was
+on the move, and that the setting sun might gild his breast-plate as in
+his last sleep he faced the sky.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! why did you go for a soldier?" sang our little news-boy,
+tauntingly, as he capered behind a big burly Dutchman in the rear rank,
+who had encountered all manner of misfortune that morning,&mdash;missing his
+coffee&mdash;and what is a man worth on a day's march without coffee&mdash;because
+it was too hot to drink, when the bugle sounded the call to fall in, his
+meat raw, not even the smell of fire about it, and his crackers half
+roasted; his clothes, too, half on, belts twisted, knapsack badly made
+up. As he grumbled over his mishaps, in his peculiar vernacular,
+laughter commenced with the men, and ended in a roar at the song of the
+news-boy.</p>
+
+<p>A crowd gathers food for mirth from the most trivial matters. Incidents
+that would not provoke a smile individually, convulse them collectively.
+Men under restraint in ranks are particularly infectious from the
+influence of the passions. With lightning-like rapidity, to misapply a
+familiar line&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"They pass from grave to gay, from lively to severe."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Snicker's Gap, which drew its euphoneous name from a First Virginia
+family that flourished in the neighborhood, was one of the coveted
+points. In the afternoon our advance occupied it, and the neighboring
+village of Snickersville; fortunately first perhaps, in force, or what
+is most probable, considering results, amused by a show of resistance to
+cover the main Rebel movement then rapidly progressing <!-- Page 142 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>further down the
+valley. From whatever cause, firing&mdash;musketry and artillery&mdash;was heard
+at intervals all the latter part of the afternoon; and as the troops
+neared the Gap, they were told that the Rebels had been driven from it
+across the river, and that it was now in our possession. Night was
+rapidly setting in as the division formed line of battle on the borders
+of the village. A halt but for a few moments. Their position was shortly
+changed to the mountain slope below the village. Down the valley sudden
+flashes of light and puffs of smoke that gracefully volumed upwards,
+followed by the sullen roar of artillery, revealed a contest between the
+advancing and retreating forces. That fire-lit scene must be a life
+picture to the fortunate beholders. Directly in front and on the left,
+thousands of camp fires burning in the rear of stacks made from
+line-of-battle, blazed in parallel rows, regular as the gas-lights of
+the avenues of a great city, and illumining by strange contrasts of
+light and shade the animated forms that encircled them. Far down to the
+right, the vertical flashes from the cannon vents vivid as lightning
+itself, instantly followed by horizontal lurid flames, belched forth
+from their dread mouths, lighting for the instant wood and field, formed
+the grandest of pyrotechnic displays. Rare spectacle&mdash;in one magnificent
+panorama, gleaming through the dark mantle of night, were the steady
+lights of peaceful camps, and the fitful flashing of the hostile cannon.</p>
+
+<p>"Fall in, fall in!" cried the officers, at the bugle call, and in a few
+moments the Brigade was in motion. Some in the ranks, with difficulty,
+at the same time managing their muskets and pails of coffee that had not
+had time to cool; others munching, as they marched, their half-fried
+crackers, and cooling with hasty breath smoking pieces of meat, while
+friendly comrades did <!-- Page 143 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>double duty in carrying their pieces. The soldier
+never calculates upon time; the present is his own when off duty, and he
+is not slow to use it; the next moment may see him started upon a long
+march, or detailed for fatigue duty, and with a philosophy apt in his
+position, he lives while he can.</p>
+
+<p>The road through Snickersville, and up the romantic gorge or gap between
+the mountains, was a good pike, and in the best marching condition. At
+the crest the Brigade undoubled its files, and entered in double ranks a
+narrow, tortuous, rocky road, ascending the mountain to the left,
+leading through woods and over fields so covered with fragments of rock,
+that a country boy in the ranks, following up a habit, however, not by
+any means confined to the country, of giving the embodiment of evil the
+credit of all unpleasant surroundings, remarked that "the Devil's
+apron-strings must have broke loose here." That night march was a weary
+addition to the toil of the day. A short cut to the summit, which
+existed, but a mile in length, and which the Commander of the Force to
+which the Brigade formed part, could readily have ascertained upon
+inquiry, would have saved a great amount of grumbling, many hard oaths,
+for Uncle Toby's army that "swore so terribly in Flanders," could not
+outdo in that respect our Grand Army of the Potomac,&mdash;and no trifling
+amount of shoe-leather for Uncle Sam. The night was terribly cold, and
+the wind in gusts swept over the mountain-top with violence sufficient
+to put the toil-worn man, unsteady under his knapsack, through the
+facings in short order. Amid stunted pines and sturdy undergrowth, the
+Regiments in line formed stacks, and the men, debarred fire from the
+exposed situation, provided what shelter they could, and endeavored to
+<!-- Page 144 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>compose themselves for the night. Vain endeavor. So closely was that
+summit shaved by the pitiless blasts, that a blanket could only be kept
+over the body by rolling in it, and lying face downwards, holding the
+ends by the hands, with the forehead resting on the knapsack for a
+pillow. Some in that way, by occasionally drumming their toes against
+the rocks managed to pass the night; many others sought warmth or
+amusement in groups, and others gazed silently on the camp-fires of the
+enemy, an irregular reflex of those seen on the side they had left&mdash;here
+glimmering faintly at a picket station, and there at a larger
+encampment, glowing first in a circle of blaze, then of illumined smoke,
+that in its upward course gradually darkened into the blackness of
+night. To men of contemplative habits, and many such there were, though
+clad in blouses, the scene was strongly suggestive. Our states emblemed
+in the lights of the valleys and the mountain ridge as the much talked
+of "impassable barrier." But faith in the success of a cause Heaven
+founded, saw gaps that we could control in that mountain ridge which
+would ultimately prove avenues of success.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain, where did you make the raise?" inquired a young Lieutenant, on
+the following day,&mdash;one of a group enjoying a blazing fire, for the ban
+had been removed at early dawn&mdash;of a ruddy-faced, sturdy-looking
+officer, who bore on his shoulder a tempting hind quarter of beef.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a little history connected with this beef," as he lowered his
+load. "Lieutenant," replied the Captain, interlarding his further
+statement with oaths, to which justice cannot and ought not to be done
+in print, and which were excelled in finish only by some choice ones of
+the Division General. "I went <!-- Page 145 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>out at sunrise, thinking that by
+strolling among the rocks I might stir up a rabbit. I saw several, but
+got a fair shot at one only, and killed it. While going into a fence
+corner, in which were some thorn bushes, that I thought I could stir
+another cotton tail from, I saw a young bullock making for me, with
+lowered horns and short jumps. I couldn't get through the thorn bushes,
+and the fact is, being an old butcher I didn't care much about it, so I
+faced about, looked the bullock full in the eyes, and the bullock eyed
+me, giving at the same time an occasional toss of his short horns. Now I
+was awful hungry, never was more hollow in my life&mdash;the hardees that I
+swallowed dry in the morning fairly rattled inside of me. By-and-by I
+smelt the steaks, and a minute more I felt sure that he was a Rebel
+beast. Our young cattle up North don't corner people in that way. What's
+the use, thought I, and out came my Colt, and I planted a ball square
+between his eyes. As I returned the pistol he was on his side kicking
+and quivering. While looking at him, and rather coming to the conclusion
+that I had bought an elephant after all, as I had not even a penknife to
+skin it with, I spied that sucker-mouthed Aid of Old Pigeon-hole coming
+from another corner of the field, cantering at full jump. I left,
+walking towards Camp.</p>
+
+<p>"'Captain, where was that picket-firing?'</p>
+
+<p>"I pointed towards the wood, and told him that I thought it was along
+the picket-line."</p>
+
+<p>"'It must have been, I suppose,' said the Aid, in a drawling manner.
+'The General was sure it was a rifle. The rest of us thought it a pistol
+shot,' he said, as he rode off.</p>
+
+<p>"When he got into the wood I returned to the bullock, cursing Old
+Pigey's ears for want of experience <!-- Page 146 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>in shots. They made me come mighty
+close to being arrested for marauding.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh! whar did you git the jump-high?' said a darkie, who came up
+suddenly, pointing to the rabbit which I had put on the fence, with
+mouth open and a big show of the whites of his eyes. When he saw the
+carcass he fairly jumped.</p>
+
+<p>"'Massa has had me shinning it round de rocks all morning. When I'm on
+de one side de jump-high is on de oder; and if I go back widout one
+he'll cuss me for a d&mdash;&mdash;d stumbling woolly-head. Dat's his name for me
+any way.'</p>
+
+<p>"I struck a bargain with the boy; he loaned me his jack-knife, and held
+the legs, and I had the skin off as soon as a two-inch blade (hacked at
+that) would allow, and I gave him the jump-high, and told him if he'd
+watch the beef till I carried this quarter home, I'd give him a fore
+quarter. I knew his Master was as bad off as myself, and would ask no
+questions, and then I sneaked up in rear of the General's quarters."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I'd call Profane History," said the Lieutenant, as the
+Captain resumed his load.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, boys! Go into the Third Cavalry four months, as I did; and if any
+of you swear less than I do, I'll treat."</p>
+
+<p>"One fault with the story, Captain," said another Lieutenant, detaining
+him; "you make no application."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't intend it as a sermon; what application would you make?"</p>
+
+<p>"A very practical one, Captain. I would apply half a quarter to one man,
+half a quarter to another. Make a distribution among your friends."</p>
+
+<p>The Captain, somewhat sold, told them to send down a detail, and he
+would distribute.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 147 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p><p>The detail returned, well loaded, having performed their duty
+faithfully, with the exception of trimming Sambo's fore-quarter "mighty
+close," as he phrased it.</p>
+
+<p>That bullock turned out to be merely the first course of a grand flesh
+carnival, which lasted the remaining two days of the stay on Snicker's
+summit. The wood and fields almost swarmed with rabbits and quails; but
+although furnishing amusement to all, they were but titbits for the
+delicate. By some remissness of vigilance under the stringent orders,
+cattle, sheep, and hogs were slaughtered on all sides. There was an
+abundance of them; the farmers in the valley having driven them up, as
+was their custom, for the pasture and mast to be found in the fields and
+woods. Half wild, the flavor of their flesh was a close approach to that
+of game. As may be supposed, where licence was untrammelled, there was
+much needless slaughter. Fine carcasses were left as they fell, with the
+loss only of a few choice cuts. As the beasts, especially the pigs,
+which looked like our ordinary porkers well stretched, could run with
+great speed, the chase was amusing as well as exciting. Red breeches and
+blue fraternized and vied with each other in the sport, to quarrel,
+perhaps, over the spoils.</p>
+
+<p>Few will fail to carry to their homes recollections of that pleasing
+episode in the history of the Regiment: the feasts of fat things, the
+space-built inclosures around the camp-fires that sheltered them from
+the blast, and were amphitheatres of amusement&mdash;recollections that will
+interest many a future fireside, destined, with the lapse of time, to
+become sacred as family traditions of the Revolution. And have they not
+equal claims? The Revolution founded the country; this struggle must
+save it from the infamous <!-- Page 148 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>and despotic demands of a most foul and
+unnatural Rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>"Halloo! Doctor! where did that 'animile' come from," inquired the
+Major, who formed one of a crowd, on the afternoon of the last day of
+their stay in the Head Quarters Spruce Retreat, as the little Dutch
+Doctor strutted alongside of a Corporal of an adjoining regiment, who
+led by a halter, extemporized from a musket-strap and a cross-belt, a
+small light dun horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Mine, Major! Pay forty-five tollar&mdash;have pay five, only forty yet to
+get. How you like him? What you tink?"</p>
+
+<p>The "only forty yet to get" amused the crowd, but the Major, with the
+gravity of a connoisseur, walked around the beast, nipped his legs, and
+opened his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor, it's a pity to use this beast&mdash;only two years old, and never
+shod. Is he broke?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. No broke anywhere. Have look at whole of him."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd laughed, and the Major with them.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand me. Can you ride him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Me no ride him, no saddle. Corporal, him ride all round."</p>
+
+<p>The Corporal stated that he was broken in so far as to allow riding, and
+was very gentle, as indeed was apparent from the looks of the animal.</p>
+
+<p>"When did you get him, Corporal?" was the query of one of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"I bought four yesterday for four hundred and seventy-five dollars
+Confederate scrip."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, where did you get that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bought it in Washington, when we first went through, of a boy on the
+Avenue for fifteen cents. I <!-- Page 149 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>thought there might be a show for it some
+day or other."</p>
+
+<p>The Corporal was a slender, lantern-jawed, weasel-faced Monongahela
+raftsman, sharp as a steel-trap.</p>
+
+<p>"The old fellow," continued he, "hung on to five hundred dollars for
+about an hour. He took me into his house, gave me a nip of old apple
+brandy, and then he'd talk about his horses and then another nip, till
+we felt it a little, but no go. I had to jew, for it was all I had. I'd
+just as leave have given him another hundred, but I didn't tell him so.
+I told him I got it at Antietam."</p>
+
+<p>"You d&mdash;&mdash;d rascal," said he, "I had a son killed and robbed there,
+maybe it's his money. It looks as if it had been carried a good while."</p>
+
+<p>"I had played smart with it, rubbed it, wet it, and in my breast pocket
+on those long marches it was well sweated."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose it was your son's," said I, "all is fair in war."</p>
+
+<p>"That's so," said the old Rebel. "I have two other sons there; I would
+go myself, it I wasn't seventy-eight and upwards."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, looky here," said I, "this isn't talking horse; we'll manage your
+sons, and you, too, if you don't dry up on your treason slang. Now, old
+covey, four hundred and seventy-five or I'm back to camp without them."</p>
+
+<p>"I turned and got about ten steps, when he called me back and told me to
+take them. I got a bully pair of matches, fine blacks, that a Colonel in
+the Regiment paid me one hundred and twenty-five for at first sight, and
+a fine pacing bay that our Major gave me seventy-five for, and this
+one's left."</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor, I'm about tired of trotting around after <!-- Page 150 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>them other forty.
+They're givin' out cracker rations, and I don't want to be cheated out
+of mine, and I must go," said the Corporal, turning quickly to the
+Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>The latter personage snapped his eyes, and kept his cap bobbing up and
+down, by wrinkling his forehead, as he somewhat plaintively asked the
+crowd for the funds.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord! Doctor, you might as well try to milk a he-goat with a
+bramble bush as to get money in camp now," said the Major.</p>
+
+<p>"Corporal," said the Adjutant, a fast friend of the Doctor's, and being
+of a musical turn, his partner in many a Dutch duet, as a bright idea
+struck him, "you don't want the money now&mdash;there are no sutlers about,
+suppose the Doctor gives you an order on the Pay-Master."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the Corporal, after some little study, and keeping a sharp
+look-out on the Adjutant, whose features were fixed, "that's a fact, I
+have no use for the money now. If one of you Head-Quarter officers
+endorses it, I will. 'Spose it's all straight."</p>
+
+<p>The Adjutant drew the order, and one of the Field-Officers endorsed it,
+after the manner of documents forwarded through regular military
+channels:</p>
+
+<p>"Approved and respectfully forwarded."</p>
+
+<p>It was handed to the Corporal, and he turned to go, leaving the horse
+with the Doctor, and giving the crowd an opportunity for their laugh, so
+far suppressed with difficulty. He had gone but a few paces when an
+exclamation from the quondam Third cavalryman called him back, and ended
+for the moment the laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Where does the old fellow live, Corporal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep out that lane to the left, then across lots by <!-- Page 151 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>a narrow path.
+Can't miss it. He has no more horses."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't want horses."</p>
+
+<p>"That apple brandy it's no use trying for."</p>
+
+<p>"Boys," said the Captain, "I'm good for half a dozen canteens of the
+stuff, I'll bet my boots on it. Who'll go along?"</p>
+
+<p>"I," replied a sturdy brother Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Recollect now. All here at nine to-night to receive our report. No use
+to tell you that, though, when whiskey is about," said the first
+Captain, as the crowd dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>And that report was given by his comrade to the punctual crowd as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>"When I came out to the charred pine stumps on the lane, where I was to
+meet the Captain, it was a little before dusk. I was just about clear of
+the wood, when the Colonel's big black mare, ridden by the Captain, came
+bouncing over a scrub pine and lit right in front of me. The d&mdash;&mdash;l
+himself couldn't have made me feel a colder shudder.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the matter? Where's your horse?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought we had better walk,' said I, recovered from the fright;
+'it's only a short distance.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That ain't the thing. There must be some style about this matter.'</p>
+
+<p>"I had noticed that the Captain had on the Colonel's fancy Regulation
+overcoat, a gilt edged fatigue cap, his over-long jingling Mexican
+spurs, and the Major's sabre dangling from his side. I came back, got
+the Adjutant's horse, and rejoined him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, I want you to understand,' said the Captain, putting on his
+prettiest, as we jogged along the lane, 'that I'm General Burnside. How
+does that strike you?'</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 152 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p><p>"'That you don't look a d&mdash;n bit like Burney. He is no fancy man. Your
+style is nearer the Prince's,&mdash;Fitz John. All you want are the yellow
+kids,' rejoined I.</p>
+
+<p>"'Too near home, that. How will Gen. Franklin do?'</p>
+
+<p>"As I knew nothing about Franklin's appearance, I said I supposed that
+would do. Before respectable people I'd have hated to see any of our
+Generals wronged by the Captain's looks, but as it was only a Rebel, it
+didn't make any difference. And then the object overcame all scruples.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' continued the Captain, 'you are to be one of my aids. When we
+get near the house, just fall back a pace or two.'</p>
+
+<p>"And off he rode, the big mare trotting like an elephant, and keeping my
+nag up to a gallop. Keeping back a pace or two was a matter of
+necessity. The Captain was full a hundred yards ahead when he halted
+near the house to give me time to get in position, his black mare
+prancing and snorting under the Mexican ticklers in a manner that would
+have done credit to Bucephalus. He pranced on up towards the house,
+which was a long weather-boarded structure, a story and a half high,
+with a porch running its entire length. The building was put up, I
+should judge, before the war of 1812, and not repaired since. A crabbed
+old man in a grey coat, with horn buttons, and tan-colored pantaloons,
+looking as if he didn't know what to make exactly of the character of
+his visitors, was on the porch. Near him, and somewhat in his rear, was
+a darkie about as old as himself.</p>
+
+<p>"'Won't you get off your critters?' at length said the old man, his
+servant advancing to hold the horses.</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain dismounted, and as his long spurs <!-- Page 153 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>jingled, and the Major's
+sabre clattered on the rotten porch floor, the old fellow changed
+countenance considerably, impressed with the presence of greatness.</p>
+
+<p>"'I am Major-General Franklin, sir, commander of a Grand Division of the
+Grand Army of the Potomac,' pompously said the Captain, at the same time
+introducing me as his Aid, Major Kennedy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, gentlemen officers,' stammers the old man, confusedly, and
+bowing repeatedly, 'I always liked the old Union. I fit for it in the
+milish in the last war with the Britishers. Walk in, walk in,' continued
+he, pointing to the door which the darkie had opened.</p>
+
+<p>"We went into a long room with a low ceiling, dirty floor with no carpet
+on, a few old chairs, with and without backs, and a walnut table that
+looked as if it once had leaves. In one corner was a clock, that stopped
+some time before the war commenced, as the old man afterwards told us,
+and in the opposite corner stood a dirty pine cupboard. While taking
+seats, I couldn't help thinking how badly the room would compare with a
+dining room of one of the neat little farm houses that you can see in
+any of our mountain gaps, where the land produces nothing but
+grasshoppers and rocks, and the farmers have to get along by raising
+chickens to keep down the swarms of grasshoppers, and by peddling
+huckleberries, and they say, but I never saw them at it, by holding the
+hind legs of the sheep up to let them get their noses between the rocks
+for pasture."</p>
+
+<p>This latter assertion was indignantly denied by an officer who had his
+home in one of the gaps.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' continued the Captain, 'I only give it as I heard it. The old
+man talked Union awhile, said he tried to be all right, but that his
+sons had run off <!-- Page 154 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>with the Rebels; and he hemmed and hawed about his
+being all right until the Captain, who had been spitting fips a long
+time, got tired, especially after what the Corporal had said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, my old brother patriot,' said the Captain, bending forward in
+his chair, and putting on a stern look, 'it don't look exactly right.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How! What! gentlemen officers,' said the old Rebel, pretending, as he
+raised his hand to his ear, not to hear the Captain.</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain repeated it louder in his gruff voice, and with a few more
+airs.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, gentlemen officers?' said the old man, rising, half bowing, and
+looking about, ready to do anything.</p>
+
+<p>"'You know as well as we do,' said the Captain; 'that you wouldn't let
+two of your neighbors be this long in the house without offering them
+something to drink. Now, my old friend, as you say you're all right,
+we're neighbors in a good cause, and one neighborly act deserves
+another; you might be wanting to have your property protected, or to go
+to the Ferry, or to send something, and you could hardly get a pass
+without a Major-General having something to do with it.'</p>
+
+<p>"At this last the old fellow's face brightened up somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll lose a right smart lot of crops,' said the old man, drawing his
+chair close to the Captain in a half begging, confidential sort of a
+way, 'if I don't get to the Ferry this fall. They're stored up there,
+and I want to go up and show them I am a Union man all right. George,'
+turning to the darkie, who, cap in hand, stood at the door, 'strike a
+light and get the waiter, and three glasses, and bring up some of the
+<!-- Page 155 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>old apple in a pitcher. Be careful not to spill any. Liquor is mighty
+scarce,' continued he, turning to us, 'in these parts since the war.
+This 'ere I've saved over by hard squeezin'. It was stilled seven years
+ago this fall&mdash;the fall apples were so plenty.'</p>
+
+<p>"George had the tallow-dip, a rusty waiter, three small old-fashioned
+blue glass tumblers, and a pitcher with the handle knocked off, on the
+table in good time. We closed around it with our chairs, and the Captain
+filled the glasses, and rising, gave for the first round 'The old
+Union.' Our glasses were emptied; the old man had but sipped of his.</p>
+
+<p>"'My old friend, you fought in 1812, you say, and hardly touch your
+tumbler to the old Union. Come, it must have a full glass.' The
+authority in the tone of the Captain made the old man swallow it, but as
+he did so he muttered something about its being very scarce.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now,' said the Captain, refilling the glasses, 'Here is The Union as
+it is.'</p>
+
+<p>"The old Rebel feeling his first glass a little, and they say anyway
+when wine goes in the truth comes out, said in rather a low, trembling
+tone,</p>
+
+<p>"'Now, the fact is, gentlemen officers, some Yankees&mdash;not you! not you!
+but some Yankees way up North, acted kind of bad.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's not the question,' said the Captain, 'there are bad men all
+over, and lots of them in Virginia. The toast is before the house,'&mdash;the
+Captain had already swallowed his&mdash;'and it must be drunk;' and the
+Major's sabre struck the floor till the table shook.</p>
+
+<p>"With a shudder at the sound the old man gulped it down. The glasses
+were refilled and the pitcher emptied.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 156 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p><p>"'Here's to The blessed Union as it will be, after all the d&mdash;&mdash;d Rebels
+are either under the sod or swinging in hemp neck-ties about ten feet
+above it,' the Captain shouted, waving at the same time his uplifted
+glass in a way that brought a grin on George's face, and made the old
+man look pale.</p>
+
+<p>"'Now! now! now! gentlemen officers,' gasped the old traitor, as if his
+breath was coming back by jerks, 'that is pretty hard,
+considerin'&mdash;considerin' my two sons ran off 'gainst my will&mdash;'gainst
+my will, gentlemen officers, understand, and jined the Rebels;' and then,
+as the liquor worked up his pluck and pride, he went on, 'and old
+Stonewall when he was here last, told me himself at this very table that
+such soldiers the South could be proud of; and Turner Ashby told me the
+same thing, and it would be agin all natur for an old man not to feel
+proud of such boys, after hearing all that from such men, and now you
+want me to drink such a toast. That&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir,' broke in the Captain, who had emptied his glass, 'and it
+must be done.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The fact is, gentlemen officers,' the liquor still working up his
+pluck, 'we Southerners <i>had</i> to fit you. You sent old Brown down to run
+off our niggers, and then when we hung him, you come yourselves. Every
+cussed nigger&mdash;and I had forty-three in all&mdash;has left me and ran away
+but old George and two old wenches that can't run, and are good for
+nothin' but to chaw corndodgers.' The whiskey now worked fast on the old
+man, and making half a fist, he said, 'I reckon when hangin' day comes
+some Blue Bellies will have an airin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You d&mdash;&mdash;d grey-headed old traitor!' roared out the Captain, 'the
+liquor has let the treason out. Now, by all that's holy, drink that
+toast standing, <!-- Page 157 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>head up, as if there was patriotic blood in your
+veins&mdash;as if you lived in the State Washington was born in&mdash;or you'll
+find out what it is to talk treason before a Major-General of the army
+of the United States.' Another stroke of the sabre on the floor that
+rattled the broken glass in the windows followed. The old man gave
+another shudder, straightened up, steadied himself at the table with his
+left hand, and with a swallow that nearly strangled him, drank off his
+glass.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ha! old fellow,' said the Captain, grinning, 'you came near cheating
+hemp that clip.'</p>
+
+<p>"'George, show us where the apple brandy is,' he continued, addressing
+the darkie.</p>
+
+<p>"The darkie bowed, grinned, and pointed to the door leading to the
+cellar way.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Lord! my spirits! Don't take it, gentlemen officers, I must have a
+morning dram, and it's all I've got. Let me keep the spirits.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You old d&mdash;&mdash;l!' exclaimed the Captain, as he eyed him savagely,
+'spirits have made all the trouble in the country. Yes, sir. Bad whiskey
+and worse preaching of false spiritual doctrines, such as slavery being
+a Divine institution, and what not, started the Rebellion, and keep it
+up. Spirits are contraband of war, just as Ben Butler says niggers are,
+and we'll confiscate it'&mdash;here the Captain gave me a sly look&mdash;'in the
+name and by the authority of the President of the United States. Major,
+where's your canteens?'</p>
+
+<p>"I produced three that had been slung under my cape, and the Captain as
+many more.</p>
+
+<p>"As the old Rebel saw the preparations he groaned out, 'My God! and only
+four inches in the barrel George! mind, the barrel in the corner.'</p>
+
+<p>"Knowing the darkie would be all right, we followed <!-- Page 158 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>under pretty stiff
+loads, the old man bringing up the rear, staggering to the door and
+getting down the steps on his hands and knees.</p>
+
+<p>"The Captain tasted both barrels. One in a corner was commissary that
+the darkie said 'Massa had dickered for just the day afore.' The other
+was well nigh empty. George, old as he was, had the steadiest hands, and
+he filled the canteens one by one, closing their mouths on the cedar
+spigot. As he did it, he whispered, 'Dis'll make de ole nigger feel
+good. Massa gets flustered on dis and 'buses de ole wimin. De commissary
+fotches him&mdash;can't hurt nuffin wid dat.'</p>
+
+<p>"'There's devilish little to fluster him now,' said the Captain, as he
+tipped the barrel to fill the last canteen.</p>
+
+<p>"The old man had stuck at the bottom of the steps. George fairly carried
+him up, and he lay almost helpless on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"'That last toast,' said the Captain, as we left the room, 'will knock
+any Rebel.'</p>
+
+<p>"George held the horses, and I rather guess steadied our legs as we got
+on, well loaded with apple juice inside and out. The Captain's spurs
+sent the black mare off at a gallop, over rocks and bushes, and he left
+me far behind in a jiffy. But I did in earnest act as an aid before we
+got to camp. I found him near the place where we turn in, fast between
+two scrub oaks, swearing like a trooper at the pickets, as he called the
+bushes, for arresting him, and unable to get backward or forward. His
+swearing saved him that clip, as it was dark, and I would have gone past
+if I hadn't heard it."</p>
+
+<p>"I move the adoption of the report, with the thanks of the meeting to
+Major-General Franklin and his <!-- Page 159 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>genuine Aid," said the Adjutant, after a
+stiff drink all around.</p>
+
+<p>"I move that it be referred back for report on the Commissary," said a
+Lieutenant, after another equally stiff round.</p>
+
+<p>The Adjutant would not withdraw his motion,&mdash;no chairman to preserve
+order,&mdash;brandy good,&mdash;drinks frequent, and in the confusion that ensued
+we close the chapter, remarking only that the Commissary was spared to
+the old Rebel, through an order to march at four next morning, that came
+to hand near midnight.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 160 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The March to Warrenton&mdash;Secesh Sympathy and Quarter-Master's
+Receipts&mdash;Middle-Borough&mdash;The Venerable Uncle Ned and his Story of the
+Captain of the Tigers&mdash;The Adjutant on Strategy&mdash;Red-Tapism and
+Mac-Napoleonism&mdash;Movement Stopped&mdash;Division Head-Quarters out of
+Whiskey&mdash;Stragglers and Marauders&mdash;A Summary Proceeding&mdash;Persimmons and
+Picket-Duty&mdash;A Rebellious Pig&mdash;McClellanism.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>The order to march at four meant moving at six, as was not unfrequently
+the case, the men being too often under arms by the hour shivering for
+the step, while the Staff Officers who issued the orders were snoozing
+in comfortable blankets. Be the cause what it might that morning, the
+soldiers probably did not regret it, as it gave them opportunity to see
+the lovely valley of the Shenandoah exposed to their view for the last
+time, as the fog gradually lifted before the rays of the rising sun. The
+Shenandoah, like a silver thread broken by intervening foliage, lay at
+their feet. Far to the right, miles distant, was Charlestown, where old
+John's soul, appreciative of the beauties of nature at the dread hour of
+execution, seeing in them doubtless the handiwork of nature's God,
+exclaimed "This is indeed a beautiful country." In the front, dim in the
+distance, was Winchester, readily discovered by the bold mountain spur
+in its rear. Smaller villages dotted the valley, variegated <!-- Page 161 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>by fields
+and woods&mdash;all rebellious cities of the plain, nests of treason and
+granaries of food for traitors. A blind mercy that, on the part of the
+Administration, that procured its almost total exemption from the
+despoiling hand of war.</p>
+
+<p>Some in the ranks on Snicker's Summit that fine morning could remember
+the impudent Billingsgate of look and tongue with which Mrs. Faulkner
+would fling in their faces a general pass, from a wagon loaded with
+garden truck for traitors in arms at Bunker Hill&mdash;but an instance of
+long continued good-nature, to use a mild phrase, of the many that have
+characterized our movements in the field. Well does the great discerner
+of the desires of men as well as delineator of the movements of their
+passions, make Crook Richard on his foully usurped and tottering throne
+exclaim,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"War must be brief when traitors brave the field."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At a later day, in a holier cause, the line remains an axiom. Nor at the
+time of which we write was the policy much changed. While all admit the
+necessity, for the preservation of proper discipline, of having Rebel
+property for the use of the army taken formally under authorities duly
+constituted for the purpose, and not by indiscriminate license to the
+troops, none can be so blind as to fail to see the bent of the
+sympathies controlling the General in command. During the march to
+Middle-Borough, horses were taken along the route to supply deficiencies
+in the teams, and forage for their use, but in all cases the women who
+claimed to represent absent male owners&mdash;absent doubtless in arms&mdash;and
+who made no secret of their own Rebel inclinations, received
+Quarter-Master's receipts for their full value&mdash;generally, in fact,
+their <!-- Page 162 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>own valuation. These receipts were understood to be presently
+payable. The interests of justice and our finances would have been much
+better subserved had their payment been conditioned upon the loyalty of
+the owner. A different policy would not have comported, however, with
+that which at an earlier day placed Lee's mansion on the Peninsula under
+double guard, and when you give it the in that case sorry merit of
+consistency, its best excuse is given.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond some lives lost by a force of Regulars who ventured too near the
+river without proper precautions the day after we occupied the Gap, and
+the loss of a Regimental head-quarters wagon, loaded with the officers'
+baggage, broken down upon a road on which the exhorting Colonel, after
+deliberate survey, had set his heart as the safest of roads from the
+Summit, nothing of note occurred during the stay. Our evacuation of the
+Gap was almost immediately followed by Rebel occupation.</p>
+
+<p>The statement that nothing of note occurred may, perhaps, be doing
+injustice to our little Dutch Doctor, who had the best of reasons for
+remembering the morning of our departure from Snicker's Summit. To the
+Doctor the mountain, with its rocks, seemed familiar ground. A Tyrolese
+by birth, he loved to talk of his mountain home and sing its lively
+airs. But that sweet home had one disadvantage. Their beasts of draught
+and burden were oxen, and the only horse in the village was a cart-horse
+owned by the Doctor's father. Of necessity, therefore, his horsemanship
+was defective, an annoying affair in the army. Many officers and men
+were desirous of seeing the Doctor mount and ride his newly purchased
+horse, and the Doctor was quite as anxious to evade observation. His
+saddle was on and blankets strapped as <!-- Page 163 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>he surveyed the beast, now
+passing to this side and now to that, giving wide berth to heels that
+never kicked, and with his servant at hand, waiting until the last files
+of the Regiment had disappeared in the woods below. Not unobserved,
+however, for two of the Field and Staff had selected a clump of scrub
+pines close at hand for the purpose of witnessing the movement. A rock
+near by served him as a stand from which to mount. The horse was brought
+up, and the Doctor, after patting his head and rubbing his neck to
+assure himself of the good intentions of the animal, cautiously took his
+place in the saddle and adjusted his feet in the stirrups.</p>
+
+<p>The animal moved off quietly enough, until the Doctor, to increase his
+speed, touched him in the flank with his spur, when the novel sensation
+to the beast had the effect of producing a sudden flank movement, which
+resulted in the instant precipitation of the Doctor upon his back among
+the rocks and rough undergrowth. The horse stood quietly; there was no
+movement of the bushes among which the Doctor fell, and the mirth of the
+observers changed to fear lest an accident of a serious nature had
+occurred. The officers and servant rushed to the spot. Fortunately the
+fall had been broken somewhat by the bushes, but nevertheless plainly
+audible groans in Dutch escaped him, and when aware of the presence of
+the observers, exclamations in half broken English as to what the result
+might have been. The actual result was that the horse was forthwith
+condemned as "no goot" by the Doctor; an ambulance sent for, and
+necessity for the first time made him take a seat during the march in
+that vehicle, a practice disgracefully common among army surgeons. The
+horse in charge of the servant followed, but was ever <!-- Page 164 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>after used as a
+pack. No amount of persuasion, even when way-worn and foot-sore from the
+march, could induce the Doctor to remount his charger.</p>
+
+<p>Middle-Borough, a pretty place near the Bull Run Range of mountains, was
+reached about ten o'clock in the forenoon of the day after leaving the
+Gap. After the first Bull Run battle the place was made use of, as
+indeed were all the towns as far up the country as Martinsburg, as a
+Rebel hospital. Some of the inmates in butternut and grey, with surgeons
+and officers on parole in like color, but gorgeous in gilding, were
+still to be seen about the streets. Greyheaded darkies and picaninnies
+peered with grinning faces over every fence. The wenches were busily
+employing the time allowed for the halt in baking hoe-cakes for the men.</p>
+
+<p>In front of the principal mansion of the place, owned by a Major in the
+Rebel service under Jackson, a small group of officers and men were
+interesting themselves in the examination of an antique naval sword that
+had just been purchased by a Sergeant from a venerable Uncle Ned, who
+stood hat in hand, his bald head exposed to the sun, bowing as each new
+comer joined the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Dat sword, gemmen," said the negro, politely and repeatedly bowing,
+"belonged to a Captain ob de Louisiana Tigers dat Hannar Amander and me
+nussed, case he came late and couldn't get into de hospitals or houses,
+dey was so full right after de fust big Bull Run fight. His thigh was
+all shot to pieces. He hadn't any money, and didn't seem to hab any
+friends but Hannar Amander."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Hannah Amanda?" said one of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife, sah," said the old man, crossing his <!-- Page 165 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>breast slowly with his
+right hand and profoundly bowing.</p>
+
+<p>"Hannar Amander said de young man must be cared for, dat de good Lor
+would hold us 'countable if we let him suffer, so we gab him our bed,
+shared our little hoe-cake and rye coffee wid him, and Susan Matildar,
+my darter, and my wife dressed de wound as how de surgeon would tell us.
+But after about five days de surgeon shook his head and told de Captain
+he couldn't lib. De poor young man failed fast arter dat; he would moan
+and mutter all time ober ladies' names.</p>
+
+<p>"'Reckon you hab a moder and sisters?' said my wife to him one morning.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, God! yes,' said de fine-looking young man, for, as Hannar Amander
+said, he was purty as a pictur, and she'd often say how much would his
+moder and sisters gib if dey could only nuss him instead of us poor
+culled pussons. He said, too, he was no Rebel at heart&mdash;dat he was from
+de Norf, and a clerk in a store at New Orleans, and dey pressed him to
+go, and den he thought he'd better go as Captain if he had to go, and
+dey made him Captain. 'And now I must die a traitor! My God! when will
+my moder and sisters hear of dis, and what will dey say?' and he went on
+so and moaned; and when we found out he was from up Norf, and sorry at
+dat for being a Rebel, we felt all de warmer toward him. He called us
+bery kind, but moaned and went on so dreadfully dat my wife and darter
+didn't know what to do to comfort him. Dey bathed his head and made him
+cool drinks, but no use. 'It's not de pain ob de body,' said Hannar
+Amander to me, 'it's ob de heart&mdash;dat's what's de matter.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Hab you made your peace wid God, and are <!-- Page 166 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>you ready for eberlasting
+rest?' said my wife to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'My God!' groaned he, 'dere's no peace or rest for me. I'm a sinner and
+a Rebel too. Oh, I can't die in such a cause!' and he half raised up,
+but soon sunk down again.</p>
+
+<p>"'We'm all rebels to de bressed God. His Grace alone can sab us,' said
+my wife, and she sung from dat good hymn</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'Tis God alone can gib<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">De bliss for which we sigh.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"'Susan Matildar, bring your Bible and read some.' While she said dis,
+de poor young man's eyes got full ob tears.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, my poor moder! how she used to read to me from dat book, and how
+I've neglected it,' said he.</p>
+
+<p>"Den Susan Matildar&mdash;she'd learned to read from her missus' little
+girls&mdash;read about all de weary laden coming unto de blessed Sabiour.
+Wheneber she could she'd read to him, and I went and got good old
+Brudder Jones to pray for him. By un by de young man begin to pray
+hisself, and den he smiled, and den, oh, I neber can forget how Hannar
+Amander clapped her hands and shouted 'Now I know he's numbered wid de
+army ob de Lor'! kase he smiles.' Dat was his first smile; but I can
+tell you, gemmen, it grew brighter and brighter, and by un by his face
+was all smiles, and he died saying he'd meet his moder and all ob us in
+Hebben, and praising de bressed Lor'!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man wiped his eyes, and there was a brief pause, none caring
+even in that rough, hastily collected <!-- Page 167 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>crowd to break the silence that
+followed his plain and pathetic statement.</p>
+
+<p>"But how did you get the sword?" at last inquired one.</p>
+
+<p>"Before he died he said he was sorry he could not pay us for our
+kindness," resumed the old man. "Hannar Amander said dat shouldn't
+trouble him, our pay would be entered up in our 'ternal count.</p>
+
+<p>"And den he gab me dis sword and said I should keep it and sell it, and
+dat would bring me suffin'. And he gab Susan Matildar his penknife. De
+Secesh am 'quiring about de sword. I'd like to keep it, to mind de young
+man by, but we've all got him here," said the old man, pointing to his
+heart. "I'd sooner gib it to you boys dan sell it to de Rebels, but de
+Sargeant yer was good enough to pay me suffin for it, and den I cant
+forget dat good young man, I see his grave every day. We buried him at
+de foot ob our little lot, and Susan Matildar keeps flowers on his grave
+all day long. Her missus found out he was from de Norf and was sorry
+'fore he died he had been a Rebel, and she told Susan Matildar she
+wouldn't hab buried him dere. But Hannar Amander said dat if all de
+Rebels got into glory so nice dey'd do well; and de sooner dey are dere
+de better for us all, dis ole man say."</p>
+
+<p>This last brought a smile to the crowd, and a collection was taken up
+for the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Bress you, gemmen! bress you! Served my Master forty-five years and hab
+nuffin to show for it. Our little patch Hannar Amander got, but I tries
+to sarve de Lor at de same time, and dere is a better 'count kept ob dat
+in a place where old Master dead and gone now pas' twenty years, will
+nebber hab a chance ob getting at de books."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 168 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p><p>The old man had greatly won upon his hearers, when the bugle called them
+to their posts.</p>
+
+<p>Our corps from this place took the road to White Plains, near which
+little village they encamped in a wood for two nights and a day, while a
+snow-storm whitened the fields.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Let the hawk stoop, the bird has flown,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>said a boyish-faced officer who was known in the Regiment as the
+Poetical Lieutenant, to the Adjutant, as he pushed aside the canvas door
+of the Office Tent on one of those wintry evenings. The caller had left
+the studies of the Sophomoric year,&mdash;or rather his Scott, Byron, Burns,
+and the popular novelists of the day,&mdash;for the recruiting service in his
+native county. The day-dreams of the boy as to the gilded glory of the
+soldier had been roughly broken in upon by severe practical lessons, in
+tedious out-post duty and wearisome marches. He could remember, as could
+many others, how he had admired the noble and commanding air with which
+Washington stands in the bow of the well loaded boat as represented on
+the historic canvas, and the stern determination depicted upon the
+countenances of the rest of his Roman-nosed comrades&mdash;(why is it that
+our historic artists make all our Revolutionary Fathers Roman-nosed? If
+their pictures are faithful, where in the world do our swarms of pugs
+and aquilines come from worn by those claiming Revolutionary descent? Is
+it beyond their skill to make a pug or an aquiline an index to nobility
+of soul or heroic resolve?)&mdash;as they keep the frozen masses borne by
+that angry tide at safe distance from the frail bark&mdash;but he then felt
+nothing of the ice grating the sides of the vessel in <!-- Page 169 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>which he hoped to
+make the voyage of life, nor shuddered at the wintry midnight blast that
+swept down the valley of the Delaware. His dreams had departed; but
+poetical quotations remained for use at every opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter now?" says the Adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the Aids just told me," rejoined the Lieutenant, "that the
+Rebels were in force in our front, and would contest the Rappahannock,
+while the possession of the Gap we have just left lets them in upon our
+rear."</p>
+
+<p>"The old game played out again," says the Adjutant. "Another string
+loose in the bag. Strategy in one respect resembles mesmerism&mdash;the
+object operated upon must remain perfectly quiet. Are we never to
+suppose that the Rebels have plans, and that their vigilance increases,
+and will increase, in proportion to the extremity of their case? Our
+theorists and routine men move armies as a student practises at chess,
+as if the whole field was under their control, and both armies at their
+disposal. With our immense resources, vigorous fighting and practical
+common sense would speedily suppress the Rebellion. Where are our old
+fighting stock of Generals? our Hookers, Heintzelmans, Hancocks, and men
+of like kidney? Why must their fiery energies succumb to a cold-blooded
+strategy, that wastes the materiel of war, and what is worse, fills our
+hospitals to no purpose? Those men have learned how to command from
+actual contact with men. The art of being practical, adapting one's self
+to emergencies, is not taught in schools. With some it is doubtless
+innate; with the great mass, it is a matter of education, such as is
+acquired from moving among men."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 170 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"We have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Where is our Pyrrhic phalanx gone?<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Of two such lessons why forget<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The nobler and the manlier one?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>broke in our Poetical Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"D&mdash;n your Pyrrhics," retorted the Adjutant, snappishly. "For the
+Pyrrhics of past days we have Empirics now. Our phalanxes of old have
+been led to victory by militia Colonels, who sprang from the thinking
+head of the people, glowing with the sacred fire of their cause. Do you
+not believe," continued he enthusiastically, "that the loyal masses who
+sprang into ranks at the insult upon Sumter would have found a leader
+long ere this worthy of their cause, whose rapid and decisive blows
+would have saved us disgraceful campaigns, had the nation been
+unencumbered by this ruin of a Regular Army, that has given us little
+else than a tremendous array of officers, many of them of the
+Pigeon-hole and Paper order,&mdash;beggarly lists of Privates,&mdash;Routine that
+must be carried out at any cost of success,&mdash;and Red Tape that
+everywhere represses patriotism? And then to think, too, of the
+half-heartedness and disaffection. How long must these sneaking
+Catilines in high places abuse our patience? But what can be expected
+from officers who are not in the service from patriotic motives, but
+rather from prospects of pay and position? End the war, and you will
+have men who are now unworthy Major and Brigadier Generals, subsiding
+into Captains and Lieutenants. Their movements indicate that <i>they</i>
+realize their position fully; but when will the country realize that
+'strategy' is played out?"</p>
+
+<p>"The whiskey at Division Head-quarters is played out, any way," said a
+Sergeant on duty in the Commissary <!-- Page 171 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>Department, who had entered the tent
+while the Adjutant was speaking.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"'And not a drop to drink,'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>rejoined the Lieutenant.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, by Heaven, we are lost," continued the Adjutant. "Strategy played
+out and our General of Division out of whiskey. Yes, sir! those mishaps
+end all further movement of this Grand Army of the Potomac. But when did
+you hear that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was in the marquee of the Brigade Commissary when a Sergeant and a
+couple of privates on duty about Pigey's Head-quarters came in with a
+demijohn and a note to the Commissary, presenting the compliments of the
+General commanding Division, and at the same time the cash for four
+gallons of whiskey. The Captain read it carefully and told the Sergeant
+to tell the General that he didn't keep a dram-shop. I expected that
+this reply would make sport, and I concluded to wait awhile and see the
+thing out. In a few minutes the Sergeant returned, stating that he had
+not given that reply to the General, through fear, I suppose, but had
+stated that the Captain had made some excuse. He said further that Pigey
+said he was entirely out, and must have some.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell him what I told you,' said the Captain, determinedly. Off the
+Sergeant started. I waited for his return outside, and asked him how
+Pigey took the answer. 'Took it?' said he, 'I didn't tell him about the
+dram-shop, but when he found I had none, he raved like mad&mdash;swore he was
+entirely out&mdash;had been since morning, and must and would have some. He
+d&mdash;&mdash;d the Captain for being a temperance fanatic, and for bringing his
+fanatical notions into the army; and all the while he paced up and down
+his marquee <!-- Page 172 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>like a tiger at a menagerie. At last he told me that I must
+return again and tell the Captain that it was a case of absolute
+necessity, and that he knew that there was a barrel of it among the
+Commissary stores, and that he must have his four gallons.'</p>
+
+<p>"I followed the Sergeant in, but he could not make it. The Captain had
+just turned it over to the Hospital.</p>
+
+<p>"So the Sergeant went back again with the empty demijohn. He told me
+afterwards that the General was so taken aback by his not getting any,
+that he sat quietly down on his camp stool, ran his fingers through his
+hair, pulled at his moustache, and then 'I knew,' said the Sergeant,
+'that a storm was brewing, and that the General was studying how to do
+justice to the subject. At length he rose slowly, kicked his hat that
+had fallen at his feet to one corner of the marquee, d&mdash;&mdash;g it at the
+same time; d&mdash;&mdash;d me for not getting it any how, and clenching his fists
+and walking rapidly up and down, d&mdash;&mdash;d the Captain, his Brigadier, and
+everything belonging to the Brigade, until I thought it a little too
+hard for a man who had had a Sunday School education in his young days
+to listen to, and I left him still cursing.'"</p>
+
+<p>"He will court-martial the Captain," said the Colonel, who had entered
+the tent, "for signal contempt of the Regular Service. I recollect a
+charge of that kind preferred by a Regular Lieutenant against an
+Adjutant of the &mdash;&mdash; Maine, down in the Peninsula. In one of our marches
+the Adjutant had occasion to ride rapidly by the Regiment to which the
+Lieutenant belonged. The Lieutenant hailed him&mdash;told him to stop. The
+Adjutant knowing his duty, and that he had no authority to halt him,
+continued his pace, but found himself for nearly a month afterward in
+arrest <!-- Page 173 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>under a charge of 'Signal contempt for the Regular Service.'"</p>
+
+<p>Sigel's hardy Teutons lined the road in the vicinity of New Baltimore,
+through which village the route lay on the following day. Part of his
+corps had some days previously occupied the mountain gaps in the Bull
+Run range on the left. Other troops, led by a Commander whose strategy
+was singularly efficacious to keep him out of fights, were passing to
+the front, leaving a fighting General of undoubted prowess in European
+and American history, in the rear. Inefficient himself, and perhaps
+designedly so, his policy could not, with safety to his own reputation,
+allow of efficiency elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>That night our Regiment encamped in one of the old pine fields common in
+Virginia. The softness of the decaying foliage of the pine which covered
+the ground as a cushion was admirably adapted to repose, and upon it the
+men rested, while the gentle evening breeze sighed among the boughs
+above them, as if in sympathy with disappointed hopes and sacrifices
+made in vain.</p>
+
+<p>"Stragglers and marauders, sir," said a Sergeant of the Provost Guard,
+saluting the Colonel, who was one of the circle lying cozily about the
+fire, pointing as he spoke to a squad of way-worn, wo-begone men under
+guard in his rear. "Here is a list of their offences. I was ordered to
+report them for punishment."</p>
+
+<p>"A new wrinkle, that," said the Colonel, as the Sergeant left. "Our
+Brigadier must be acting upon his own responsibility. Our General of
+Division would certainly never have permitted such an opportunity slip
+for employing the time of officers in Courts-martial. That list would
+have kept one of our <!-- Page 174 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>Division Courts in session at least three weeks,
+and have given the General himself an infinite amount of satisfaction in
+examining his French authorities, and in strictures upon the Records.
+What have we here, any how?"</p>
+
+<p>No. 1. "Straggling to a persimmon tree on the road-side."</p>
+
+<p>"That man," said a Lieutenant, "when he saw our Brigadier coming up,
+presented him with a couple of persimmons very politely. But it was no
+go; the General ordered him under guard and eat the persimmons as part
+of the punishment."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," rejoined the Colonel, "we'll let you off with guard duty for the
+night."</p>
+
+<p>No. 2. "Killing a shoat while the Regiment halted at noon."</p>
+
+<p>The man charged was a fine-looking young fellow whose only preparation
+for the musket, when he enlisted, was previous practice with the yard
+stick in a dry goods establishment. Intelligent and good-natured, he was
+popular in the command, and was never known to let his larder suffer.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it a Rebel pig?" inquired a bystander.</p>
+
+<p>"A most rebellious pig," replied he, bowing to the Colonel. "He gave us
+a great amount of trouble, and rebelled to the last." A laugh followed,
+interrupted by the Colonel, who desired to hear the circumstances of the
+case.</p>
+
+<p>"Right after we had halted on the other side of New Baltimore,"
+continued the man, "I saw the pig rooting about a corn shock, and as my
+haversack was empty, and myself hungry, I thought I could dispose of
+part of him to advantage, and before I had time to reflect about the
+order, I commenced running after him. Several others followed, and some
+officers <!-- Page 175 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>near by stood looking at us. After skinning my hands and knees
+in trying to catch him by throwing myself upon him, I finally caught
+him. When I had him skinned, I gave a piece to all the officers who saw
+me, saving only a ham for myself, and I was dressing it when up came a
+Lieutenant of the Provost Guard and demanded it. I debated the matter as
+well as a keen appetite would allow, and finally coming to the
+conclusion that I could not serve my country as I should, if half
+starved, I resolved to keep it, and refused him, and he reported me, and
+here I am with it at your service," clapping his hand on a well filled
+haversack.</p>
+
+<p>One-half of the meat was confiscated, but the novelty of the sergeant's
+patriotic plea saved him further penalty.</p>
+
+<p>No. 3. Caught in a negro shanty, in company with an old wench.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd laughed; while the subject, a tall cadaverous-looking fellow,
+protested earnestly that he was only waiting while the wench baked him a
+hoe-cake.</p>
+
+<p>"Guard duty for the night," said the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor devil! He will have to keep awake, and can't sing&mdash;'Sleeping I
+dream, love, dream, love, of thee'"&mdash;said the poetical Lieutenant, who
+chanced to be one of the group.</p>
+
+<p>No. 4. Caught by the General Commanding Division, twenty feet high on a
+persimmon tree, and Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 on the ground below; also
+"Lying."</p>
+
+<p>"Another persimmon crowd. Every night we are troubled with the persimmon
+business," said the Colonel; "but what does the 'also Lying' mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said a frank fellow of the crowd, "you see when the old General
+came up, I said it was a <!-- Page 176 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>picket station, and that the man up the tree
+was looking out for the enemy. It was a big thing, I thought, but the
+General didn't see it, and he swore he would persimmon us."</p>
+
+<p>"Which meant," said the Colonel, "that you would lose your persimmons,
+and go on extra police duty for forty-eight hours each."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd were lectured upon straggling, that too frequent offence of
+Volunteers, and after a severe reprimand dismissed.</p>
+
+<p>The country abounded in persimmon trees, and their golden fruit was a
+sore temptation to teeth sharpened on army crackers. As the season
+advanced, and persimmons became more palatable, crowds would thus be
+brought up nightly for punishment. This summary procedure was an
+innovation by the Brigadier upon the Red-Tape formulary of
+Courts-martial, so rigidly adhered to, and fondly indulged in, by the
+General of Division. The Brigadier would frequently himself dispose of
+delinquencies of the kind, telling the boys in a manner that made them
+feel that he cared for their welfare, that they had been entrusted to
+him by the country for its service, and that he considered himself under
+obligations to their relatives and friends to see that while under his
+command their characters received no detriment, and while becoming good
+soldiers they would not grow to be bad citizens. He made them realize,
+that although soldiers they were still citizens; and many a man has left
+him all the better for a reprimand which reminded him of duties to
+relatives and society at large. How much nobility of soul might be
+spared to the country with care of this kind, on the part of commanders.
+Punishment is necessary&mdash;but how many to whom it is intrusted forget
+that in giving it a moral effect upon <!-- Page 177 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>society, care should be taken
+that it may operate beneficially upon the individual. The General who
+crushes the soul out of his command by exacting infamous punishments for
+trivial offences, is but a short remove from the commander who would
+basely surrender it to the enemy on the barest pretext. Punishment has
+too often been connected with prejudice against Volunteers in the Army
+of the Potomac, controlled as it has been too much by martinets. That a
+nation of freemen could have endured so long the contumely of a proud
+military leader when his incapacity was so apparent, will be a matter of
+wonder for the historian. The inconsistency that would follow the great
+Napoleon in modelling an army and neglect his example in giving it
+mobility, with eminent propriety leaves the record of its exploits to
+depend upon the pen of a scion of the unmilitary House of Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>But the decree "thus far shalt thou come," forced upon an honest but
+blindly indulgent President by the People, who will not forget that
+power is derived from them, had already gone forth, although not yet
+officially announced to the Army; and it was during the week at
+Warrenton, our halting-place on the morrow, that the army, with the
+citizens at home, rejoiced that the work of staying the proud waves of
+imbecility, as well as insult, to our Administration, had commenced. The
+history of reforms is one of the sacrifice of blood, money, and time.
+Frightful bills of mortality, shattered finances, nineteen months of
+valuable time, do not in this case admit of an exception.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 178 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Camp near Warrenton&mdash;Stability of the Republic&mdash;Measures, not Men,
+regarded by the Public&mdash;Removal of McClellan&mdash;Division Head-Quarters a
+House of Mourning&mdash;A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point
+Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box&mdash;Head-Quarter Murmurings and
+Mutterings&mdash;Departure of Little Mac and the Prince&mdash;Cheering by Word of
+Command&mdash;The Southern Saratoga&mdash;Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>Writers prone to treat of the instability of Republics, will find
+serious matter to combat in the array of events that culminated at
+Warrenton. Without the blood that has usually characterized similar
+events in the history of Monarchies, in fact with scarcely a ripple upon
+the surface of our national affairs, a great military chieftain, or to
+speak truly, a commander who had endeavored, and who had the grandest of
+opportunities to become such, passed from his proud position as the
+leader of the chief army of the Republic, to the obscurity of private
+life. Proffered to a public, pliant, because anxious that its
+representatives in the field should have a worthy Commander, by an
+Administration eager to repair the disaster of Bull Run,&mdash;puffed into
+favor by almost the entire press of the country, the day had been when
+the loyalty of the citizen was measured by his admiration of General
+McClellan.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 179 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>Never did a military leader assume command so auspiciously. The
+resources of a mighty nation were lavishly contributed to the materiel
+of his army. Its best blood stood in his ranks. Indulged to an almost
+criminal extent by an Administration that in accordance with the wishes
+of the masses it represented, bowed at his beck and was overly
+solicitous to do his bidding, no wonder that this ordinary mind became
+unduly inflated. He could model his army upon the precedents set by the
+great Napoleon; he could surround himself by an immense Staff&mdash;the
+talent of which, however, but poorly represented the vigor of his
+army,&mdash;for nepotism and favoritism interfered to prevent that, as they
+will with common men; drill and discipline could make his army
+efficient,&mdash;for his subordinates were thorough and competent, and his
+men were apt pupils; but he himself could not add to all these the
+crowning glories of the field. Every thing was there but genius, that
+God-given gift; and that he did not prove to be a Napoleon resulted
+alone from a lack of brains.</p>
+
+<p>Now that the glare of the rocket has passed from our sky, and its stick
+has fallen quietly enough among the pines of New Jersey, citizens have
+opportunity for calm reflection. We are not justified, perhaps, in
+attributing to McClellan all the evils and errors that disfigure his
+tenure of office. Intellect equal to the position he could not create
+for himself, and ninety-nine out of one hundred men of average ability
+would not have descended from his balloon-like elevation with any better
+grace. It is in the last degree unjust to brand with disloyalty, conduct
+that seems to be a result natural enough to incompetency. That upon
+certain occasions he may have been used for disloyal purposes by
+designing men, may be the consequence <!-- Page 180 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>of lack of discrimination rather
+than of patriotism.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever might have induced his conduct of the war, the nation has
+learned a lesson for all time. Generals who had grown grey in honorable
+service were rudely set aside for a Commander whose principal merit
+consisted in his having published moderately well compiled military
+books. Their acquiescence redounds to their credit; but their continued
+and comparatively calm submission in after times, when that General,
+regardless of soldierly merit, placed in high and honorable positions
+relatives and intimate friends, who could be but mere place-men,
+dependent entirely upon him for their honors, and committed to his
+interests, is strong proof of devoted patriotism. Slight hold had these
+neophytes upon the stern matter-of-fact fighting Generals, or the
+equally devoted and patriotic masses in ranks. In their vain glory they
+murmured and muttered during and subsequent to this week at Warrenton,
+as they had threatened previously, in regard to the removal of
+McClellan. They knew not the Power that backed the Bayonet. In the eye
+of the unreserved and determined loyalty of the masses, success was the
+test of popularity with any Commander. Not the shadow of an excuse
+existed for any other issue. Our resources of the materiel of war were
+well nigh infinite. Men could be had almost without number, at least
+equal to the Rebels in courage. There was, then, no excuse for inaction,
+and none knew it better than our reflecting rank and file.</p>
+
+<p>The effort to inspire popularity for McClellan had been untiring by his
+devotees in position in the army. In the outset it was successful. Like
+their friends at home, the men in ranks, during the dark days that
+<!-- Page 181 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>succeeded Bull Run, eagerly caught at a name that received such
+honorable mention. That this flush of popularity did not increase until
+it became a steady flame like that which burned within the breasts of
+the veterans of the old French Empire, is because its subject lacked the
+commanding ability, decision of character, and fiery energy, that made
+statesmen do reverence, turned the tide of battle to advantage, and
+swept with resistless force over the plains of Italy and the mountains
+of Tyrol.</p>
+
+<p>It was with mingled feelings of pleasure and uncertainty, caused by the
+change, that the Regiment broke to the front in column of company, and
+encamped on a beautifully wooded ridge about two miles north of
+Warrenton. Pleasure upon account of the change&mdash;as any change must be
+for the better,&mdash;uncertainty, as to its character and extent. In their
+doubtful future, Generals shifted position, and succeeded each other,
+very much as dark specks appear and pass before unsteady vision. Who
+would be the successor? Would the change be radical? were questions that
+were discussed in all possible bearings around cheerful camp-fires.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the satisfaction among subordinate officers and the ranks,
+Division Head-quarters was a house of mourning. To the General removed
+solely it owed its existence. Connected with his choice Corps, it had
+basked in the sunshine of his favor. With the removal already ordered,
+"the dread of something worse"&mdash;a removal nearer home was apprehended.
+As a Field Commander, the officer upon whose shoulders rested the
+responsibilities of the Division, was entirely unknown previously to his
+assuming command. His life hitherto had been of such a nature as not to
+add to his capacity as a Commander. <!-- Page 182 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>Years of quiet clerkly duty in the
+Topographical Department may, and doubtless did in his case, make an
+excellent engineer or draughtsman, but they afford few men opportunities
+for improvement in generalship. During the McClellan regime this source
+furnished a heavy proportion of our superior officers. Why, would be
+difficult to say on any other hypothesis than that of favoritism. Their
+educational influences tend to a defensive policy, which history proves
+Generals of ability to have indulged in only upon the severest
+necessity. To inability to rise above these strictures of the school,
+may be traced the policy which has portrayed upon the historic page, to
+our lasting disgrace as a nation, the humiliating spectacle of a mighty
+and brave people, with resources almost unlimited, compelled for nearly
+two years to defend their Capital against armies greatly inferior to
+their own in men and means.</p>
+
+<p>Independently of these educational defects, as they must be called,
+there was nothing in either the character or person of the Division
+Commander to command respect or inspire fear. Eccentric to a most
+whimsical degree, his oddities were the jest of the Division, while they
+were not in the least relieved by his extreme nervousness and fidgety
+habits of body. That there was nothing to inspire fear is, however,
+subject to exception, as his whims kept subordinates in a continual
+fever. The art of being practical&mdash;adapting himself to circumstances&mdash;he
+had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in
+which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point.
+His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement.
+Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many
+occasions rendered him unfortunate <!-- Page 183 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>in his intercourse with volunteer
+officers. Politeness with him, assumed the airs and grimaces of a French
+dancing-master, which personage he was not unfrequently and not inaptly
+said to resemble. Displeasure he would manifest by the oddest of
+gestures and volleys of the latest oaths, uttered in a nervous, half
+stuttering manner. Socially, his extensive educational acquirements made
+him a pleasant companion, and with a friend it was said he would drink
+as deep and long as any man in the Army of the Potomac. Once crossed,
+however, his malignity would be manifested by the most intolerable and
+petty persecution.</p>
+
+<p>"He has no judgment," said a Field-Officer of a Regiment of his command;
+a remark which, by the way, was a good summary of his character.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" replied the officer to whom he was speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"I was out on picket duty," rejoined the other, "yesterday. We had an
+unnecessarily heavy Reserve, and one half of the men in it were allowed
+to rest without their belts and boxes. The General in the afternoon paid
+us a visit, and seeing this found fault, that the men were not kept
+equipped; observing at the same time that they could rest equally well
+with their cartridge boxes on; that when he was a Cadet at West Point he
+had ascertained by actual practice that it could be done."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you recollect, General," I remarked, "whether you had forty rounds
+of ball cartridge in your box then?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said he did not know that that made any difference."</p>
+
+<p>"Now considering that the fact of the boxes being filled makes all the
+difference, I say," continued the officer, "that the man who makes a
+remark such a the General made, is devoid of judgment."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 184 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p><p>But he was connected both by ties of friendship and consanguinity with
+the hitherto Commander of the Army of the Potomac. His Adjutant-General
+was related to the same personage. The position of the latter, for which
+he was totally unfitted by his habits, was perhaps a condition precedent
+to the appointment of the General of Division.</p>
+
+<p>The fifth of November, a day destined to become celebrated hereafter in
+American as in English history, dawned not less inauspiciously upon the
+Head-quarters of the Corps. They too could not appreciate the dry humor
+of the order that commanded Little Mac to report at Trenton. They
+thought alone of the unwelcome reality&mdash;that it was but an American way
+of sending him to Coventry. The Commander of the Corps had been a great
+favorite at the Head-quarters of the army&mdash;perhaps because in this old
+West Point instructor the haughty dignity and prejudice against
+volunteers which characterized too many Regular officers, had its
+fullest personification. His Corps embraced the largest number of
+Regular officers. In some Regiments they were ridiculously, and for
+Uncle Sam expensively, plentiful,&mdash;some Companies having two or three
+Captains, two or three First or Second Lieutenants,&mdash;while perhaps the
+enlisted men in the Regiment did not number two hundred. But these
+supernumeraries were Fitz John's favorites, and whether they performed
+any other labor than sporting shoulder straps, regularly visiting the
+Paymasters, adjusting paper collars and cultivating moustaches, was a
+matter of seemingly small consequence, though during depressed national
+finances.</p>
+
+<p>The little patriotism that animated many of the officers attached to
+both of these Head-quarters, did not restrain curses deep if not loud.
+Pay and position <!-- Page 185 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>kept them in the army at the outbreak of the
+Rebellion; and pay and position alone prevented their taking the same
+train from Warrenton that carried away their favorite Commander. A
+telegram of the Associated Press stated a few days later that a list of
+eighty had been prepared for dismissal. What evil genius averted this
+benefit to the country, the War Department best knows. It required no
+vision of the night, nor gift of soothsaying, to foretell the trouble
+that would result from allowing officers in important positions to
+remain in the army, who were under the strongest obligations to the
+General removed, devotedly attached to him, and completely identified
+with, and subservient to, his interests. It might at least be supposed
+that his policy would be persevered in, and that his interests would not
+suffer. So far the reform was not radical.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel," said one of these martinets who occupied a prominent position
+upon the Staff of Prince Fitz John, as with a look of mingled contempt
+and astonishment he pointed to a Lieutenant who stood a few rods distant
+engaged in conversation with two privates of his command, "do you allow
+commissioned officers to converse with privates?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, sir? Those three men were intimate acquaintances at home. In
+fact, the Lieutenant was a clerk in a dry-goods establishment in which
+one of the privates was a junior partner."</p>
+
+<p>"All wrong, sir," replied the martinet. "They should approach a
+commissioned officer through a Sergeant. The Inspecting Officer will
+report you for laxity of discipline in case it continues, and place you
+under arrest."</p>
+
+<p>The Brigadier, when he heard of this conversation, intimated that should
+the Inspecting Officer attempt <!-- Page 186 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>it, he would leave the Brigade limits
+under guard; and it was not attempted.</p>
+
+<p>Nonsense such as this is not only contemptible but criminal, when
+contrasted with the kind fellowship of Washington for his men,&mdash;his
+solicitude for their sufferings at Valley Forge,&mdash;Putnam sharing his
+scanty meals with privates of his command,&mdash;Napoleon learning the wants
+of his veterans from their own lips, and tapping a Grenadier familiarly
+upon the shoulder to ask the favor of a pinch from his snuff-box. Those
+worthies may rest assured that marquees pitched at Regulation distance,
+and access through non-commissioned officers, will not, if natural
+dignity be wanting, create respect. How greatly would the efficiency of
+the army have been increased, had the true gentility that characterized
+the noble soul of Colonel Simmons, who fell at Gaines' Mills, and that
+will always command reverence, been more general among his brother
+officers of the Regular Army.</p>
+
+<p>These evil results should not, however, lead to a wholesome condemnation
+of West Point. The advantages of the Institution have been abused, or
+rather neglected, by the great masses of the Loyal States. In our moral
+matter-of-fact business communities it has been too generally the case,
+that cadets have been the appointees of political favoritism, regardless
+of merit; and that the wild and often worthless son of influential and
+wealthy parents, who had grown beyond home restraint, and who gave
+little indication of a life of honor or usefulness, would be turned into
+the public inclosure at West Point to square his morals and his toes at
+the same time at public expense, and the act rejoiced at as a good
+family riddance. Thus in the Loyal States, the profession of arms had
+fallen greatly into disrepute previously <!-- Page 187 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>to the outbreak of the
+Rebellion, and instead of being known as a respectable vocation, was
+considered as none at all. Had military training to some extent been
+connected with the common school education of the land, we would have
+gained in health, and would have been provided with an able array of
+officers for our noble army of Volunteers. Among other preparations for
+their infamous revolt, the Rebels did not fail to give this especial
+prominence. The Northern States have been great in peace; the material
+is being rapidly educated that will make them correspondingly great in
+war.</p>
+
+<p>"November's surly blasts" were baring the forests of foliage, when the
+order for the last Review by McClellan was read to the Troops. Mutinies
+and rumors of mutinies "from the most reliable sources" had been
+suspended above the Administration, like the threatening sword of
+Damocles; but Abraham's foot was down at last, and beyond murmurings and
+mutterings at disaffected Head-Quarters no unsoldierly conduct marked
+the reception of the order. So far from the "heavens being hung with
+black," as a few man-worshippers in their mad devotion would have
+wished, nature smiled beautifully fair. Such a sight could only be
+realized in Republican America. A military Commander of the greatest
+army upon the Continent, elevated in the vain-glory of dependent
+subordinates into a quasi-Dictatorship, was suddenly lowered from his
+high position, and his late Troops march to this last Review with the
+quiet formality of a dress parade. What cared those stern,
+self-sacrificing men in ranks, from whose bayonets that brilliant sun
+glistened in diamond splendor, for the magic of a name&mdash;the majesty of a
+Staff, gorgeous, although not clothed in the uniform desired by its late
+Chief. The <!-- Page 188 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>measure of payment for toil and sacrifice with them, was
+progress in the prosecution of their holy cause. The thunders of the
+artillery that welcomed <i>him</i> with the honor due to his rank, reminded
+<i>them</i> to how little purpose, through shortcomings upon his part, those
+same pieces had thundered upon the Peninsula and at Antietam.</p>
+
+<p>Massed in close columns by division along the main road leading to
+Warrenton, the troops awaited the last of the grand pageants that had
+made the Army of the Potomac famous for reviews. Its late Commander, as
+he gracefully sat his bay, had not the nonchalance of manner that he
+manifested while reading a note and accompanying our earnest President
+in a former review at Sharpsburg; nor was the quiet dignity that he
+usually exhibited when at the head of his Staff, apparent. His manner
+seemed nervous, his look doubly anxious; troubled in the present, and
+solicitous as to the future. Conscious, too, doubtless, as he faced a
+nation's Representatives in arms, how he had "kept the word of promise
+to the ear," and how "he had broken it to the hope;" how while his
+reviews had revealed a mighty army of undoubted ability and eagerness
+for the fight, his indecision or proneness to delay had made its
+campaigns the laughing-stock of the world. His brilliant Staff clattered
+at his heels; but glittering surroundings were powerless to avert the
+memories of a winter's inactivity at Manassas, the delay at Yorktown,
+the blunders on the Chickahominy, or the disgrace of the day after
+Antietam. How closely such memories thronged upon this thinking
+soldiery, and how little men who leave families and business for the
+field, from the necessity of the case, care for men if their measures
+are unsuccessful, may be imagined, when <!-- Page 189 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>the fact is known that this
+same Little Mac, once so great a favorite through efforts of the Press
+and officers with whom he had peopled the places in his gift, received
+his last cheers from some Divisions of that same Army by word of
+command.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"A long farewell to all his greatness."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Imbecile in politics as in war, he cannot retrieve it by cringing to
+party purposes. The desire that actuates our masses and demands able and
+earnest leaders has long since dissolved party lines.</p>
+
+<p>This leave-taking was followed a few days later by that of the Corps
+Commander. Troubled looks, shadows that preceded his dark future, were
+plainly visible as the Prince passed up and down the lines of his late
+command.</p>
+
+<p>Another day passed, and with light hearts the men brightened their
+muskets for a Review by their new Commander, Major-General Burnside, or
+"Burney," as they popularly called the Hero of Carolina celebrity.</p>
+
+<p>But the day did not seem to be at hand that should have completed the
+reform by sweeping and garnishing disaffected, not to say disloyal
+Head-Quarters&mdash;removing from command men who were merely martinets, and
+who were in addition committed body and soul to the interests of their
+late Commander, and who, had they been in receipt of compensation from
+Richmond, could not have more completely labored by their half-hearted,
+inefficient, and tyrannizing course, to crush the spirit of our
+soldiery.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with Old Pigey?" inquired a Sergeant, detailed on
+guard duty at Division Head-Quarters, as he saluted his Captain, on one
+of these evenings at Warrenton.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" rejoined the Captain.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 190 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p><p>"The General," continued the Sergeant, "was walking up and down in front
+of his marquee almost all of last night, talking to himself, muttering,
+and at almost every other step stamping and swearing. He had a bully old
+mad on, I tell you, Captain. He went it in something of this style."</p>
+
+<p>And the sergeant himself strode up and down, muttering and stamping and
+swearing, to the great amusement of the Captain and some bystanders.</p>
+
+<p>The unwillingness to bow to the dictation of the President as
+Commander-in-Chief in his most righteous removal of their favorite,
+caused much heart-burning, and gave rise to much disloyal conduct. That
+it was tolerated at all was owing to the unappreciated indulgence or
+hesitation of the Administration, lest it should undertake too much. The
+operation, to have been skilful and complete, required nerve. That
+article so necessary for this crisis is in the ranks, and let us trust
+that for the future it will be found in greater abundance at Washington.</p>
+
+<p>The Southern Saratoga, as Warrenton has been styled among the
+fashionables of the South, has much to commend it in situation and
+scenery, as a place of residence. The town itself is an odd jumble of
+old and new buildings, and is badly laid out, or rather not laid out at
+all, as the streets make all possible angles with each other. Yankee
+enterprise appears to have had something to do with the erection of the
+later buildings. Like other towns of that neighborhood its cemetery is
+heavily peopled with Rebel dead. At the time of our occupancy many of
+its larger buildings were still occupied as hospitals.</p>
+
+<p>On the day of McClellan's departure the streets were crowded with
+officers and men, and the sympathies of the Rebel residents seemed
+strangely in unison <!-- Page 191 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>with those of the chieftain's favorites. The
+representatives of the clannish attachments which made McClellanism a
+species of Masonry in the army, were there in force. In these banded
+interests brotherly love took the place of patriotism. Little wonder!
+looking at the record of the McClellan campaigns, that the Rebels
+present fraternized with these devotees in their grief.</p>
+
+<p>"You have thrown away your ablest commander," said an elderly man, of
+intelligent and gentlemanly appearance, clad in the uniform of a surgeon
+of the Rebel army, who stood conversing with one of our own surgeons, on
+the sidewalk of the main street of the place, while the crowd gathered
+to witness the departure of the General.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really think so?" rejoined the Union Surgeon, as he earnestly
+eyed the speaker.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir," said the Rebel, emphatically. "It is not only my opinion but
+the opinion of our Generals of ability, that in parting with McClellan
+you lose the only General you have who has shown any strategic ability."</p>
+
+<p>"If that be your opinion, sir," was the decided reply, "the sooner we
+are rid of him the better."</p>
+
+<p>And to this reply the country says, Amen!</p>
+
+<p>"But what a shame it is that military genius is so little appreciated by
+the Administration, and that he is removed just at this time! Why, I
+heard our Colonel say that he had heard the General say, that in a few
+days more, he would have won a decisive victory," remarked a young
+officer, in a jaunty blue jacket, to a companion, gesticulating as he
+spoke, with a cigar between the first and second fingers of his right
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>An older officer, who overheard the remark, observed, <!-- Page 192 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>drily:&mdash;"He was
+not removed for what he would do, but for what he had done."</p>
+
+<p>"And for what he had not done," truthfully added another.</p>
+
+<p>Never had General, burdened with so many sins of omission and
+commission, as the conversation indicated, been so leniently dealt with,
+now that the Rebels in their favorite, and with him successful game of
+hide and seek, had again given him the slip, and were only in his front
+to annoy. As they had it completely in their power to prevent a general
+engagement at that point, his remark as to what would have been done was
+a very rotten twig, caught at in the vain hope of breaking his fall.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 193 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<p><i>A Skulker and the Dutch Doctor&mdash;A Review of the Corps by Old Joe&mdash;A
+Change of Base; what it means to the Soldier, and what to the
+Public&mdash;Our Quarter-Master and General Hooker&mdash;The Movement by the Left
+Flank&mdash;A Division General and Dog-driving&mdash;The Desolation of Virginia&mdash;A
+Rebel Land-Owner and the Quarter-Master&mdash;"No Hoss, Sir!"&mdash;The Poetical
+Lieutenant unappreciated&mdash;Mutton or Dog?&mdash;Desk Drudgery and Senseless
+Routine.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>"It's about time, Bill, for you to have another sick on," said a lively
+lad, somewhat jocosely, as he rubbed away at his musket-barrel, on one
+of our last mornings at the Camp, near Warrenton. "Fighting old Joe has
+the Corps now, and he will review us to-day, the Captain says, and after
+that look out for a move."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say," drawled out the man addressed; a big, lubberly fellow,
+famous in the Regiment for shirking duty&mdash;who, when picket details were
+expected, or a march in prospect, would set a good example of
+punctuality in promptly reporting at Surgeon's call, or as the Camp
+phrase had it, "stepping up for his quinine." "Well," continued he,
+"Lord knows what I'll do. I've had the rheumatics awful bad," clapping
+at the same time one hand on his hip, and the other on his right
+shoulder, "the last day or two, and then the chronical diarrh&oelig;ar."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 194 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p><p>"You had better go in on rheumatism, Bill," broke in the first speaker.
+"The Doctor will let you off best on that."</p>
+
+<p>"That's played out, isn't it, Bill," chimed in another; and to Bill's
+disgust, as he continued, "It don't go with the little Dutch Doctor
+since Sharpsburg. Every time his Company's turn would come for picket,
+while we were at that Camp, Bill would be a front-rank man at the
+Hospital, with a face as long as a rail, and twisted as if he had just
+had all his back teeth pulled. The little Dutchman would yell out
+whenever he would see him&mdash;'What for you come? Eh? You tam shneak.
+Rheumatism, eh? In hip?' And the Doctor would punch his shoulder and
+hip, and pinch his arms and legs until Bill would squirm like an eel
+under a gig. 'Here, Shteward,' said the Doctor the last time, as he
+scribbled a few words on a small piece of paper, 'Take this; make
+application under left ear, and see if dis tam rheumatism come not out.'
+Bill followed the Steward, and in a few minutes came back to quarters
+ornamented with a fly-blister as big as a dollar under his left ear.
+Next morning Bill didn't report, but he's been going it since on
+diarrh&oelig;a."</p>
+
+<p>"He wasn't smart, there," observed another. "He ought to have done as
+little Burky of our mess did. He'd hurry to quarters, take the blister
+off, clap it on again next morning when he'd report, and he'd have the
+little Dutchman swearing at the blister for not being 'wors a tam.'"</p>
+
+<p>Bill took the sallies of the crowd with the quiet remark that their turn
+for the sick list would come some day.</p>
+
+<p>The Review on that day was a grand affair. The fine-looking manly form
+of Old Joe, as, in spite of a <!-- Page 195 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>bandaged left ancle not yet recovered
+from the wound at Antietam, and that kept the foot out of the stirrup,
+he rode down the line at a gait that tested the horsemanship of his
+followers, was the admiration of the men. In his honest and independent
+looking countenance they read, or thought they could, character too
+purely republican to allow of invidious distinctions between men, who,
+in their country's hour of need, had left civil pursuits at heavy
+sacrifices, and those who served simply because the service was to them
+the business of life. With hearts that kept lively beat with the
+regimental music as they marched past their new Commander, they rejoiced
+at this mark of attention to the necessities of the country, which
+removed an Officer, notorious as a leader of reserves, and placed them
+under the care of a man high on the list of fighting Generals.
+"Waterloo," says the historic or rather philosophic novelist of France,
+"was a change of front of the universe." The results of that contest are
+matter of record, and justify the remark. At Warrenton a great Republic
+changed front, and henceforth the milk and water policy of conciliating
+"our Southern Brethren" ranked as they are behind bristling bayonets, or
+of intimidating them by a mere show of force, must give way to active
+campaigning and heavy blows.</p>
+
+<p>A rainy, misty morning a day or two after the review, saw the Corps pass
+through Warrenton, en route for the Railroad Junction, commencing the
+change of direction by the left flank, ordered by the new Commander of
+the Army. The halt for the night was made in a low piece of woodland
+lying south of the railroad. In column of Regiments the Division
+encamped, and in a space of time incredible to those not familiar with
+such scenes, knapsacks were <!-- Page 196 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>unslung and the smoke of a thousand
+camp-fires slowly struggled upwards through the falling rain. Its
+pelting was not needed to lull the soldiers, weary from the wet march
+and slippery roads, to slumber.</p>
+
+<p>At early dawn they left the Junction and its busy scenes&mdash;its lengthy
+freight-trains, and almost acres of baggage-wagons, to the rear, and
+struck the route assigned the Grand Division, of which they were part,
+for Fredericksburg. "A change of base" our friends will read in the
+leaded headings of the dailies, and pass it by as if it were a transfer
+of an article of furniture from one side of the room to the other.
+Little know they how much individual suffering from heavy knapsacks and
+blistered feet, confusion of wagon-trains, wrangling and swearing of
+teamsters, and vexation in almost infinite variety, are comprised in
+these few words. It is the army that moves, however, and the host of
+perplexities move with it, all unknown to the great public, and
+transient with the actors themselves as bubbles made by falling rain
+upon the lake. The delays incident to a wagon-train are legion.
+Occurring among the foremost wagons, they increase so rapidly that
+notwithstanding proper precaution and slowness in front, a rear-guard
+will often be kept running. The profanity produced by a single chuck
+hole in a narrow road appears to increase in arithmetical proportion as
+the wagons successively approach, and teamsters in the rear find their
+ingenuity taxed to preserve their reputation for the vice with their
+fellows.</p>
+
+<p>Why negroes are not more generally employed as teamsters is a mystery.
+They are proverbially patient and enduring. Both the interests of
+humanity and horseflesh would be best subserved by such employment, and
+the ranks would not be reduced by the constant and heavy details of
+able-bodied men for that <!-- Page 197 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>duty. Capital and careful horsemen are to be
+found among the contrabands of Virginia, and many a poor beast, bad in
+harness because badly treated, would rejoice at the change.</p>
+
+<p>Quarter-masters, Wagon-masters, Commissaries, <i>et id genus omne</i>, have
+their peculiar troubles. Our Regiment was particularly favored in a
+Quarter-Master of accomplished business tact, whose personal supervision
+over the teams during a march was untiring, and whose tongue was equally
+tireless in rehearsing to camp crowds, after the march was over, the
+troubles of the day, and how gloriously he surmounted them. In his
+department he held no divided command.</p>
+
+<p>"Get out of my train with that ambulance. You can't cut me off in that
+style," he roared in an authoritative manner to an ambulance driver, who
+had slipped in between two of his wagons on the second day of our march.</p>
+
+<p>"My ambulance was ordered here, sir! I have General &mdash;&mdash;" The driver's
+reply was here interrupted by the abrupt exclamation of the
+Quarter-Master&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care a d&mdash;n if you have Old Joe himself inside. I command this
+train and you must get out." And get out the driver did, at the
+intimation of his passenger, who, to the surprise of the Quarter-Master,
+notwithstanding his assertion, turned out to be no less a personage than
+General Hooker himself.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the law of the road," said the General, good-humoredly&mdash;candid to
+his own inconvenience&mdash;"and we must obey it."</p>
+
+<p>This ready obedience upon the part of the General was better in effect
+than any order couched in the strongest terms for the enforcement of
+discipline. The incident was long a frequent subject of conversation,
+<!-- Page 198 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>and added greatly to his popularity as a commander. The men were fond
+of contrasting it with the conduct of the General of Division, who but a
+few days later cursed a poor teamster with all manner of profanely
+qualifying adjectives because he could not give to the General and his
+Staff the best part of a difficult road.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps the men held their General of Division to too strict an
+accountability. He was still laboring under the spell of Warrenton. His
+nervous system had doubtless been deranged by the removal of his
+favorite Chief, or rather Dictator, as he had hoped he might be. "No one
+could command the army but McClellan," the General had said in his
+disgust&mdash;a disgust that would have driven him from the service, but
+that, fortunately for himself and unfortunately for his country, it was
+balanced by the pay and emoluments of a Brigadiership. Reluctant to
+allow Burnside quietly, a C&aelig;sar's opportunity to "cover his baldness
+with laurels," his whimsical movements, now galloping furiously and
+purposeless from front to rear, and from rear to front of his command,
+cursing the officers,&mdash;and that for fancied neglect of duty,&mdash;poorly
+concealed the workings of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>In one of these rapid rides, his eye caught sight of a brace of young
+hounds following one of the Sergeants.</p>
+
+<p>"Where did those dogs come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"They have followed me from the last wood, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Let them go, sir, this instant. Send them back, sir. D&mdash;n you, sir,
+I'll teach you to respect private property," replied the General,
+deploying his staff at the same time to assist in driving the dogs back,
+as notwithstanding the efforts of the Sergeant to send them to the rear,
+they crouched at a respectful distance <!-- Page 199 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>and eyed him wistfully. "D&mdash;n
+you, sir, I am the General commanding the Division, sir, and by G&mdash;d,
+sir, I command you, as such, to send those dogs back, sir!" nervously
+stammered the General as he rode excitedly from one side of the road to
+the other in front of the Sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>The affair speedily became ridiculous. Driving dogs was evidently with
+the General a more congenial employment than man&oelig;uvring men. But his
+efforts in the one proved as unsuccessful as in the other, as
+notwithstanding the aid afforded by his followers, the dogs would turn
+tail but for a short distance. After swearing most <i>dogmatically</i>, as an
+officer remarked, he turned to resume his ride to the head of the
+column, but had not gone ten yards before there was a whistle for the
+dogs. Squab was sent back to ferret out the offender. The whistling
+increased, and shortly the whole Staff and the Regimental officers were
+engaged in an attempt at its suppression. But in vain. Whistling in
+Company A, found echoes in Company B; and after some minutes of
+fruitless riding hither and thither the General was forced to retire
+under a storm of all kinds of dog-calls, swelled in volume by the
+adjacent Regiments.</p>
+
+<p>That authority should be thus abused by the General in endeavoring to
+enforce his ridiculous order, and set at naught by the men in thus
+mocking at obedience, is to be deprecated. The men took that method of
+rebuking the inconsistency, which would permit Regular and many
+Volunteer Regiments to be followed by all manner of dogs,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And cur of low degree,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and yet refuse them the accidental company of but a brace of canines. A
+simple report of the offender, <!-- Page 200 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>supposing the Sergeant to have been one,
+would have been the proper course, and would have saved a General of
+Division the disgrace of being made a laughing-stock for his command.</p>
+
+<p>"Talent is something: but tact is everything," said an eminent man, and
+nowhere has the remark a more truthful application than in the army.</p>
+
+<p>A favorite employment after the evening halt, during this three days'
+march, was the gathering of mushrooms. The old fields frequent along the
+route abounded with them, and many a royal meal they furnished. To
+farmers' sons accustomed to the sight of close cultivation, these old
+fields, half covered with stunted pines, sassafras, varieties of spice
+wood, and the never-failing persimmon tree, were objects of curiosity.
+It was hard to realize that we were marching through a country once
+considered the Garden of America, whose bountiful supplies and large
+plantations had become classic through the pen of an Irving and other
+famous writers. Fields princely in size, but barren as Sahara;
+buildings, once comfortable residences, but now tottering into ruin, are
+still there, but "all else how changed." The country is desolation
+itself. Game abounds, but whatever required the industry of man for its
+continuance has disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Civilization, which in younger States has felled forests, erected
+school-houses, given the fertility of a garden to the barren coast of
+the northern Atlantic and the wild-wood of the West, could not coalesce
+with the curse of slavery, and Virginia has been passed by in her onward
+march. This field of pines that you see on our right, whose tops are so
+dense and even as to resemble at a distance growing grain, may have been
+an open spot over which Washington followed <!-- Page 201 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>his hounds in
+ante-revolutionary days. The land abounds in memories. The very names of
+the degenerate families who eke out a scanty subsistence on some corner
+of what was once an extensive family seat, remind one of the old
+Colonial aristocracy. Reclamation of the soil, as well as deliverance of
+the enslaved, must result from this civil war. Both worth fighting for.
+So "Forward, men," "Guide right," as in very truth we are in Divine
+Providence guided.</p>
+
+<p>The long-haired, furtive-looking fathers and sons, representatives of
+all this ancient nobility, after having given over their old homesteads
+to their female or helpless male slaves, and massed their daughters and
+wives apparently in every tenth house, were keeping parallel pace with
+us on the lower bank of the Rappahannock. It was the inevitable logic of
+the law of human progress, declaring America to be in reality the land
+of the free, that compelled these misguided, miserable remnants of an
+aristocracy, to shiver in rags around November camp-fires. "They are
+joined to their idols"&mdash;but now that after years of legislative
+encroachment upon the rights of suffering humanity, they engage in a
+rebellious outbreak against a God-given Government, we will not let them
+alone in an idolatry that desolates the fair face of nature and causes
+such shameful degeneracy of the human race. Justice! slow, but still
+sure and retributive justice! How sublimely grand in her manifestations!
+After years of patient endurance of the proud contumely of South
+Carolina, New England granite blocks up the harbor of
+Charleston&mdash;Massachusetts volunteers cook their coffee in the fireplaces
+of the aristocratic homesteads of Beaufort, and negroes rally to a
+roll-call at Bunker Hill, but as volunteers in a war which <!-- Page 202 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>insures them
+liberty, and not as slaves, as was once vainly prophesied.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Who commands you?" inquired a long, lean, slightly stooped,
+sallow-faced man of about fifty, with eyes that rolled in all directions
+but towards the officer he addressed, and long hair thrown back of his
+ears in such a way as to make up an appearance that would readily
+attract the attention of a police officer.</p>
+
+<p>"I command this Regiment, sir," replied the Colonel, who, at the end of
+the day's march, was busied in directing a detail where to pitch the
+Head-quarter tents.</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' to stay yer&mdash;right in this meadow?" continued the man, in the
+half negro dialect common with the whites of the South.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what we purpose doing, sir. Are you the owner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Y-a-a-s," drawled out the man, pulling his slouch felt still further
+over his eyes. "This meadow is the best part of my hull farm."</p>
+
+<p>"Great country, this," broke in the Quarter-Master. "Why a kill-deer
+couldn't fly over it without carrying a knapsack. You don't think that
+camping upon this meadow will injure it any, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right smart it will, I reckon," rejoined the man, his eyes kindling
+somewhat, "right smart, it will. $1500 at least."</p>
+
+<p>"What! What did the land cost you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wall, I paid at the rate of $15 the acre for 118 acres, and the
+buildings and 12 acres on it are in this meadow, and the best bit of it,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you want to make us pay nearly what the whole farm cost you for
+using the meadow a single night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wall, I reckon as how the rails will all be gone, and the sod all cut
+up, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 203 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p><p>"Well, I reckon," interrupted the Quarter-Master, "that you ought to
+prove your loyalty before you talk about claiming damages from Uncle
+Sam."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'm on nary side, on nary side;" and he looked half suspiciously
+about the crowd, now somewhat increased. "I'm too old; besides, my left
+knee is crippled up bad," limping as he said so, to sustain his
+assertion.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are your children?"</p>
+
+<p>"My two boys and son-in-law are off with the South, but I'm not
+'countable for them."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, you'll have to prove your loyalty before you get a receipt
+from me for any amount."</p>
+
+<p>"Prove my loyalty?" he muttered, at the same time looking blank. "What
+sort of swearin' have you for that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't swear him at all, at all," broke in the little Irish Corporal.
+"Swearing is no substitute for swinging. Faith! he's up to that
+business. It's mate and drink to him. Make him whistle Yankee Doodle or
+sing Hail Columbia. Be jabers, it is not in his looks to do it without
+choking."</p>
+
+<p>Terence's suggestion met with a general laugh of approval. The old
+fellow, finding himself in a crowd slow to appreciate his claim for
+damages when his loyalty was at a discount, made off towards his house,
+a dingy, two-story frame near by, reminded by the Colonel as he left
+that he would be expected to keep closely within doors while the troops
+were in that vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>This sovereign of the soil was a fair specimen of the landed gentry of
+Virginia. "On nary side," as he expressed it, when the Federal troops
+were in his neighborhood, and yet malignant and dastardly enough to
+maltreat any sick or wounded Union soldier that <!-- Page 204 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>chance might throw into
+his hands. The less reserved tongues of his daughters told plainly
+enough where the family stood on the great question of the day. But
+while they recounted to some of the junior officers who were always on
+the alert in making female acquaintances, their long lists of famous
+relatives, they had all the eagerness of the Yankee, so much despised in
+the Richmond prints, in disposing of half-starved chickens and heavy
+hoe-cakes at extortionate prices. With their dickering propensities
+there was an amount of dirt on their persons and about the premises, and
+roughness in their manners, that did great discredit to the memory of
+Pocahontas.</p>
+
+<p>"You have the old horse tied up close," casually remarked a spruce young
+Sergeant who, in obedience to orders from Division Head-quarters, had
+just stationed a guard in the yard of the premises, alluding to an old,
+worn-out specimen of horseflesh tied up so closely to the house that his
+head and neck were almost a straight line.</p>
+
+<p>"Yon's no hoss, sir. It's a mare," quickly retorted one of those
+black-eyed beauties.</p>
+
+<p>The polite Sergeant, who had dressed himself with more than usual care,
+in the expectation of meeting the ladies, colored somewhat, but the
+young lady, in a matter-of-course strain, went on to say,</p>
+
+<p>"She's the only one left us, too. Preston and Moncure took the rest with
+them, and they say they've nearly used 'em up chasing you Yanks."</p>
+
+<p>Her unlady-like demeanor and exulting allusion to the Rebel cavalry
+tested to the utmost the Sergeant's qualities as a gentleman. A dicker
+for a pair of chickens, accomplished by his substituting a little ground
+coffee for a great sum in greenbacks, soon <!-- Page 205 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>brought about a better
+understanding, however, on the part of the damsel.</p>
+
+<p>A few hours later saw the Adjutant and our poetical Lieutenant snugly
+seated on split-bottomed chairs in a dirty kitchen. Random conversation,
+in which the women let slip no opportunity of reminding their visitors
+of the soldierly qualities of the Rebels, interrupted by the occasional
+bleating of sheep and bawling of calves in the cellar, made the
+evening's entertainment novel and interesting. So much so that at a late
+hour the Lieutenant, who had invested closely the younger of the two,
+said, half sighing, as he gave her a fond look,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"With thee conversing, I forget all time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">All&mdash;&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Wall, I reckon I don't," broke in the matter-of-fact young lady. "Sal,
+just kick yon door around." As Sal did her bidding, and the full moon on
+the face of an old fashioned corner clock was disclosed, she continued,
+"It's just ten minutes after eleven, and you Yanks had better be off."</p>
+
+<p>Although the Adjutant was</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Like steel amid the din of arms;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Like wax when with the fair,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>this lack of appreciation of poetic sentiment so abruptly shown, brought
+him out in a roar, and completely disconcerted the Lieutenant. They both
+retired speedily, and long after, the circumstance was one of the
+standing jokes of the camp.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most prominent and eagerly wished-for occurrences in camp, is
+the arrival of the mail. The well filled bag, looking much like one of
+the bags of documents forwarded by Congressmen for private purposes at
+Uncle Sam's expense, was emptied out on the sod that evening in front of
+the Colonel's marquee, <!-- Page 206 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>and bundles containing boots, tobacco, bread,
+clothing of all kinds, eatables, and what-not,&mdash;for at that time Uncle
+Sam's army mails did a heavy express business,&mdash;were eyed curiously, by
+the crowd impatient for distribution. Most singular of all in shape and
+feeling was a package, heavily postmarked, and addressed to the Colonel.
+It contained what was a God-send to the larder of the mess,&mdash;a quarter
+of fine tender meat. But what kind of animal, was the query. The Major,
+who was a Nimrod in his own locality, after the most thorough
+inspection, and the discovery of a short straight hair upon it,
+pronounced it venison, or young kid, and confirmed the Colonel in the
+belief that he had been remembered by one of his Western friends. But
+deer or dog was a matter of indifference to hungry campaigners. A hearty
+meal was made of it, and speculation continued until the Brigadier, who
+had perpetrated the joke upon the Colonel, saw fit, long after, to
+reveal that it was mutton that had been taken from some marauders during
+the day's march.</p>
+
+<p>During the first and second days of the march, cannonading had been
+heard at intervals on the right flank. This day, however, the silence
+was ominous; and now at its close, with our army in close proximity to
+Fredericksburg, it indicated peaceable, unopposed possession, or delay
+of our own forces. But of the delay and its cause, provoking as it was,
+and costly as it has proved, enough has probably been written. An
+Investigating Committee has given the public full records. If we do not
+learn that delinquents have been punished, let us hope that the warning
+has been sufficient to avoid like difficulties in the future.</p>
+
+<p>Our army quietly turned into camp among the wooded heights of Stafford,
+opposite the town of <!-- Page 207 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>Fredericksburg. The Rebels as quietly collected
+their forces and encamped on the heights upon the opposite side of the
+river. Day by day we could see them busily at work upon their
+fortifications. Each morning fresh mounds of earth appeared at different
+points in the semi-circular range of hills bounding Fredericksburg upon
+the South and West. This valuable time was made use of by the pontoon
+train at the rate of four miles per day.</p>
+
+<p>The three Grand Divisions, now that their stately march by the flank was
+over, had settled comfortably down among the hills of Stafford. Wood and
+water, essentials for camp comfort, were to be found in abundance. While
+the little parleying between the Commander of the Right Grand Division
+and the civil authorities of Fredericksburg continued, matters were
+somewhat in suspense. But a gradual quiet crept over the army, and in a
+few short weeks that heavily timbered country was one vast field of
+stumps, with here and there clusters of pine trees left standing for the
+comfort of different Head-quarters. As the timber disappeared, the tents
+and huts of the army before concealed in the forests were disclosed, and
+the whole country in the vicinity of the railroad was a continuous camp.
+The few open fields or barrens afforded fine review and drill grounds,
+and the toils of the march were scarcely over before in all directions
+could be heard the steady tramp of solid columns engaged in the
+evolutions of the field.</p>
+
+<p>Those who think that duties are light in camp, know nothing of the
+legions of reports, statements in duplicate and triplicate, required by
+the too often senseless formalities of red tape. These duties vary
+greatly in different divisions. With a place-man, mechanical in his
+movements, and withal not disposed <!-- Page 208 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>to lighten labor, they multiply to a
+surprising extent, and subs intrusted with their execution often find
+that the most laborious part of the service is drudgery at the desk.
+Night after night would repose at Regimental Head-quarters be
+interrupted by repetitious and in many cases inconsistent orders, the
+only purpose of which appeared to be, to remind drowsy Adjutants and
+swearing Sergeant-Majors that the Commanding General of Division still
+ruled at Division Head-quarters, and that he was most alive between the
+hours of nine and twelve at night. Independently of the fact that in
+most cases in ordinary camp-life there was no reason why these orders
+should not have issued in business hours, their multiplicity was a
+nuisance. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but in all conscience
+when the pen has been through necessity ignored, and the sword is
+uplifted for rapid and earnest blows, and the heart of a nation hangs in
+heavy suspense upon its movements, these travelling Bureaux had better
+be abolished. Superadded to all this, was the labor resulting from the
+mania for Court-Martialing that raged at Division Head-quarters.
+Mechanical in its movements, not unfrequently malignant in its designs,
+officer after officer, earnest in purpose, but in some instances perhaps
+deficient in detail, had been sacrificed to an absolutism that could
+order the charges, detail the Court, play the part of principal witness
+for the prosecution, and confirm the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>"Our volunteer force will never amount to much, until we attain the
+exact discipline of the French service," was the frequent remark of a
+General of Division. Probably not. But how much would its efficiency be
+increased, had the policy of the great Napoleon, from whose genius the
+French arms derive <!-- Page 209 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>their lustre, prevailed, in detailing for desk duty
+in quiet departments the mechanical minds of paper Generals. His master
+tact in assigning to commanders legitimate spheres of work, and with it
+the untiring zeal of a Cromwell that would run like a purifying fire
+through the army, imparting to it its own impetuosity, and ridding it of
+jealousy and disaffection, were greatly needed in this Grand Army of the
+Potomac. Nobler men never stood in ranks! Holier banners never flaunted
+in the sunlight of Heaven! God grant its directing minds corresponding
+energy and wisdom.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 210 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Red Tape and the Soldier's Widow&mdash;Pigeon-holing at Head-Quarters and
+Weeping at the Family Fireside&mdash;A Pigeon-hole General Outwitted&mdash;Fishing
+for a Discharge&mdash;The Little Irish Corporal on Topographical
+Engineers&mdash;Guard Duty over a Whiskey Barrel.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&mdash;&mdash;, Penna., Nov.&mdash;, 1862.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear George</span>:&mdash;This is the first spare time that I have been able
+to get during the last week for a letter to my dear husband. And
+now that there is quiet in the house, and our dear little boys are
+sound asleep, and the covers nicely tucked about them in their
+little trundle, I feel that I can scarcely write. There is such a
+heaviness upon my heart. When I saw the crowd at the telegraph
+office this morning while on my way to church, and heard that they
+were expecting news of a great battle on the Rappahannock, such a
+feeling of helplessness, sinking of the heart, and dizziness came
+over me, that I almost fell upon the pavement. The great battle
+that all expect so eagerly, may mean our dear little children
+fatherless and myself a widow. Oh, George, I feel so sad and
+lonely, and then every footstep I hear at the door I am afraid some
+one is coming with bad news. Your last letter, too, I do not like.
+I am afraid that more is the matter with you than you are <!-- Page 211 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>willing
+to admit. You promised me, too, that you would apply for a
+furlough. Lieut. H&mdash;&mdash; has been twice at home since he went out.
+You know he is in Sickles' Division.</p>
+
+<p>Our precious little boys keep asking continually when papa will
+come home. Little Georgie says he is a "du-du," you know that is
+what he calls a soldier, and he gets the old sword you had in the
+three months' service, and struts up and down at a great rate. They
+can both say the Lord's prayer now, and every night when they get
+through with it, they ask God to bless papa and mamma, and all the
+Union "du-dus." I do wish that you could see them in their little
+"Gadibaldis," as Harry calls them. When I see Mr. B&mdash;&mdash;and others
+take their evening walks with their children, just as you used to
+do with Georgie, it takes all the grace and all the patriotism I
+can muster to keep from murmuring.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. G&mdash;&mdash; says that we need not trouble about the rent this
+quarter, that he will wait until you are paid. The neighbors, too,
+are very kind to me, and I have been kept so busy with work from
+the shops, that I have made enough to pay all our little expenses.
+But for all, George, I cannot help wishing every minute of the day
+that "this cruel war was over" and you safe back. At a little
+sewing party that we had the other day, Em D&mdash;&mdash; sang that old song
+"When wild war's deadly blast was blown," that you used to read to
+me so often, and when I heard of "sweet babes being fatherless,"
+and "widows mourning," I burst into tears. I do not know why it is,
+but I feel as if expecting bad news continually. Our little boys
+say "don't cry, mamma," in such a way when I put them to bed at
+night, and tell them that I kiss them for you too, that it makes me
+feel all the worse. I <!-- Page 212 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>know it is wrong. I know our Heavenly Father
+knows what is best for us. I hope by this time you have learned to
+put your trust in him. That is the best preparation for the
+battle-field.</p>
+
+<p>Do not fail to come home if you can. God bless you, George, and
+protect you, is the prayer of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">Your loving wife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><span class="smcap">Mary</span>.<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>On a low cot in the corner of a hospital tent, near Potomac Creek,
+propped up by some extra blankets kindly loaned him by his comrades,
+toward the close of a December afternoon, lay a slightly-built, rather
+handsome man of about thirty, holding with trembling hand the above
+letter, and hurriedly gathering its contents with an eager but unsteady
+eye. The Surgeon noticing the growing flush upon his already fevered
+cheek, suggested that he had better have the letter read to him. So
+intent was the reader, that the suggestion was twice repeated before
+heeded, and then only drew the remark "Mary and the boys." A sudden fit
+of coughing that appeared to tear the very life strings came upon him,
+and at its close he fell back exhausted upon his pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"What luck, Adjutant?" inquired the Surgeon in a low tone, as he went
+forward, cautiously treading among the sick, to admit that officer into
+the tent.</p>
+
+<p>The Adjutant with a shake of the head remarked that the application had
+gone up two weeks previously from Brigade Head-quarters, and that
+nothing had been heard of it since. "As usual," he added, "pigeon-holed
+at Division Head-quarters."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Wilson has been inquiring about it all day, and I very much fear
+that should it come now, it will be too late. He has failed rapidly
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 213 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p><p>"So bad as that? I will send up to Division Head-quarters immediately."</p>
+
+<p>The Lieutenant, a week previously, had been brought into the hospital
+suffering from a heavy cold and fever in connexion with it. For some
+weeks he had been in delicate health; so much so, in fact, that the
+Surgeon had urged him to apply for a furlough, and had stated in his
+certificate to the same, that it was absolutely necessary for the
+preservation of his life. As the Surgeon stated, a furlough, that might
+then have been beneficial, promised now to be of little avail. The
+disease had assumed the form of congestion of the lungs, and the
+Lieutenant seemed rapidly sinking.</p>
+
+<p>When the Adjutant left the hospital tent he sought out a Captain, an
+intimate acquaintance of the Lieutenant's, and charged him with a
+special inquiry at Head-quarters, as to the success of the application
+for a furlough. Thither the Captain repaired, through the well trodden
+mud and slush of the camp ground. The party of young officers within the
+tent of the Adjutant-General appeared to be in a high state of
+enjoyment, and that functionary himself retained just presence of mind
+sufficient to assure the Captain, after hearing his statement and urgent
+inquiry&mdash;"that there was no time now to look&mdash;that there were so d&mdash;n
+many papers he could not keep the run of them. These things must take
+their regular course, Captain,&mdash;regular course, you know. That's the
+difficulty with the volunteer officers," continued he, turning half to
+the crowd, "to understand regular military channels,&mdash;channels." As he
+continued stammering and stuttering, the crowd inside suspended the pipe
+to ejaculate assent, while the Captain, understanding red-tape to his
+sorrow, and too much disgusted to make further <!-- Page 214 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>effort to understand the
+Captain, retraced his steps. Finding the Adjutant he told him of his
+lack of success, and together they repaired to the hospital tent to
+break the unwelcome news.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of his entry into the Hospital the Lieutenant was impressed
+with the belief that the illness would be his last, and he daily grew
+more solicitous as to the success of his application for a furlough.
+Another coughing fit had, during their absence, intervened, and as the
+two cautiously untied the flaps and entered the stifling atmosphere of
+the crowded tent, the Surgeon and a friend or two were bending anxiously
+about the cot. Their entry attracted the attention of the dying
+Lieutenant; for that condition his faint hurried breathing, interrupted
+by occasional gasps, and the rolling, fast glazing eye, too plainly
+denoted. A look of anxious inquiry,&mdash;a faint shake of the head from the
+Captain&mdash;for strong-voiced as he was, his tongue refused the duty of
+informing the dying man of what had become daily, unwelcome news.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my God! must I,&mdash;must I die without again seeing Mary and the
+babies!" with clasped hands he gasped, half rising, and casting at the
+same time an imploring look at the Surgeon.</p>
+
+<p>But the effort was too much. His head fell back upon the blankets. A
+gurgling sound was heard in his throat. With bowed heads to catch the
+latest whisper, his friends raised him up; and muttering indistinctly
+amid his efforts to hold the rapidly failing breath, "Mary and the
+babies. The babies,&mdash;Ma&mdash;&mdash;" the Lieutenant left the Grand Army of the
+Potomac on an everlasting furlough.</p>
+
+<p>Mary was busily engaged with the duties of her little household a week
+later, enjoying, as best she might, the lively prattle of the boys, when
+there was <!-- Page 215 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>the noise of a wagon at the door, and closely following it a
+knock. "Papa! papa!" exclaimed the children, as with eager haste they
+preceded the mother. With scarcely less eagerness, Mary opened the door.
+Merciful God! "Temper the wind to the shorn lambs." Earthly consolation
+is of little avail at a time like this. It was "Papa;"&mdash;but Mary was a
+widow, and the babies fatherless.</p>
+
+<p>By some unfortunate accident the telegram had been delayed, and the
+sight of the black pine coffin was Mary's first intimation of her loss.
+Her worst anticipations thus roughly realized, she sank at the door, a
+worthy subject for the kind offices of her neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight passed, and the Adjutant was disturbed in his slumbers,
+almost at the solemn hour of midnight, to receive from an Orderly some
+papers from Division Head-Quarters. Among them, was the application of
+the Lieutenant, returned "approved."</p>
+
+<p>Measured by poor Mary's loss, how insignificant the sigh of the monied
+man over increased taxes! how beggarly the boast of patriotic
+investments! how contemptibly cruel, in her by no means unusual case,
+the workings of Red Tape!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Occurrences such as these, may sadden for the moment the soldier, but
+they produce no lasting depression.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Don't you think I had oughter<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Be a going down to Washington<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To fight for Abraham's Daughter?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sang our ex-news-boy Birdy, on one of those cold damp evenings in early
+December, when the smoke of the fires hung like a pall over the camp
+ground, and the eyes suffered terribly if their owner made any attempt
+at standing erect.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 216 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p><p>"And who is Abraham's Daughter?" queried one of a prostrate group around
+a camp fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," continued Birdy, to another popular
+air, until he was joined by a manly swell of voices in the closing
+line&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Not much life here," continued Birdy, seating himself. "I have just
+left the 2&mdash;th. There is a high old time over there. They have got the
+dead wood on old Pigey nice."</p>
+
+<p>"In what way?" inquired the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that long, slim fellow of Co. E, in that Regiment, who is
+always lounging about the Hospital, and never on duty."</p>
+
+<p>"What! The fellow that has been going along nearly double, with both
+hands over the pit of his stomach, for a week past?"</p>
+
+<p>"The same," resumed Birdy. "He has been going it on diarrh&oelig;a lately;
+before that he was running on rheumatism. Well, you know he has been
+figuring for a discharge ever since he heard the cannonading at the
+second Bull Run, but couldn't make it before yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"How did he make it?" inquired several, earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Fished for it," quietly remarked Birdy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Birdy, this is too old a crowd for any jokes of yours. Whose
+canteen have you been sucking Commissary out of?" broke in one of his
+hearers.</p>
+
+<p>"Nary time; I'm honest, fellows. He fished for it, and I'll tell you
+how," resumed Birdy, adjusting the rubber blanket upon which he had
+seated himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You see old Pigey was riding along the path <!-- Page 217 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>that winds around the hill
+to Corps Head-Quarters, when he spied this fellow, Long Tom, as they
+call him, sitting on a stump, and alongside of the big sink, that some
+of our mess helped to dig when on police duty last. Tom held in both
+hands a long pole, over the sink, with a twine string hanging from
+it&mdash;for all the world as if he was fishing. On came old Pigey; but Tom
+never budged.</p>
+
+<p>"'What are you doing there, sir?' said the General.</p>
+
+<p>"'Fishing,' said Tom, without turning his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'Fishing! h&mdash;l and d&mdash;n! Must be crazy; no fish there.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've caught them in smaller streams than this,' drawled out Tom,
+turning at the same time his eyes upon the General, with a vacant stare.
+'But then I had better bait. The ground about here is too mean for good
+red worms. Just look,' and Tom lifted up an old sardine box, half full
+of grubs, for the General to look at.</p>
+
+<p>"'Crazy, by G&mdash;d, sir,' said the General, turning to his Aid, 'Demented!
+Demented! Might be a dangerous man in camp; must be attended to,'
+continued the General; striking, as he spoke, vigorous blows across his
+saddle-bow, with his gauntlet; Tom all the while waiting for a bite,
+with the patience of an old fisherman.</p>
+
+<p>"It was after three in the afternoon, and the General took the bait.</p>
+
+<p>"'Must be attended to. Dangerous man! dangerous man!' said he, adjusting
+his spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>"'Your name and Regiment, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>"Tom drawled them out, and the General directed his Aid to take them
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go to your Quarters, sir,' said the General.</p>
+
+<p>"'Havn't caught anything yet, and hard tack is played out,' replied Tom.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 218 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p><p>"At this the General put spurs to his horse, and left. Half an hour
+afterward, a Corporal's Guard came after Tom. They took him up to the
+marquee of the Surgeon of the Division. Tom played it just as well
+there, and yesterday his discharge came down, all O.K., and they've got
+the Commissary on the strength of it, and are having a high old time
+generally."</p>
+
+<p>"Bully boy with a glass eye! How are <i>you</i>, discharge!" and like slang
+exclamations broke rapidly and rapturously from the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"But," said one of the more thoughtful of the crowd, as the condition of
+a brother then lying hopelessly ill, with no prospect of a
+discharge,&mdash;although it had been promised repeatedly for months
+past,&mdash;pressed itself upon his attention, "how shameful that this
+able-bodied coward and idler should get off in this way, when so many
+better men are dying by inches in the hospitals. A General who
+understood his command and had more knowledge of human nature, could not
+be deceived in that way."</p>
+
+<p>"Tom had lounged about Divisions Head-Quarters so much, that he knew old
+Pigey thoroughly, and just when to take him," said a comrade.</p>
+
+<p>"All the greater shame that our Generals can be taken off their guard at
+any time," retorted the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well," continued he, "about what might be expected of one educated
+exclusively as a Topographical Engineer, and having no acquaintance with
+active field service, and with no talent for command; for it is a talent
+that West Point may educate, but cannot create."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is a Tippo, Typo, or Toppographical Engineer, Sergeant?" broke
+in the little Irish Corporal, who chanced to be one of the group, rather
+seriously. <!-- Page 219 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>"Isn't it something like a land surveyor; and be Jabers,
+wasn't the great Washington himself a land surveyor? Eh? Maybe that's
+the rayson these Tippos, Typos, or Toppographical Engineers ride such
+high horses."</p>
+
+<p>"Not badly thought of, Corporal," replied the Sergeant, amid laughter at
+Terence's discovery, and his attempt at pronunciation; "but Washington
+was a man of earnestness and ability, and not a guzzler of whiskey, and
+a mouther of indecent profanity. There are good officers in that Corps.
+There is Meade, the fighter of the noble Pennsylvania Reserves; Warren,
+a gentleman as well as a soldier. Others might be named. Meritorious
+men, but kept in the background while the place-men, cumberers of the
+service, refused by Jeff. Davis when making his selections from among
+our regular officers, as too cheap an article, are kept in position at
+such enormous sacrifices of men, money, and time. I have heard it said,
+upon good authority, that there is a nest of these old place-men in
+Washington, who keep their heads above water in the service, through the
+studied intimacy of their families with families of Members of the
+Cabinet&mdash;a toadyism that often elevates them to the depression of more
+meritorious men, and always at the expense of the country,&mdash;but&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'Dark shall be light.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Keep up your spirits, boys."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep up your spirits," echoed Birdy; "that is what they are doing all
+the time at Division Head-Quarters,&mdash;by pouring spirits down, Jim,"
+continued he, turning suddenly to a comrade, who lounged lazily
+alongside of him, holding, at the same time at the end of a stick, a tin
+cup with a wire handle, over <!-- Page 220 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>the fire, "tell the crowd about that
+whisky barrel."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the crowd had heard the story, from the manner in which they
+welcomed the suggestion, and insisted upon its reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't, till I cook my coffee," retorted Jim, pointing to the black,
+greasy liquid in the cup, simmering slowly over the half-smothered fire.
+Jim's cup had evidently been upon duty but a short time previously as a
+soup-kettle. "But it is about done," said he, lifting it carefully off,
+"and I might as well tell it while it cools."</p>
+
+<p>"About one week ago I happened to be detailed as a Head-Quarter guard,
+and about four o'clock in the afternoon was pacing up and down the beat
+in front of the General's Head-Quarters. It was a pleasant sun-shiny
+spring day,&mdash;when gadflies like to try their wings, and the ground seems
+to smoke in all directions,&mdash;and the General sat back composedly in the
+corner of his tent on a camp stool, with his elbow on his knee and his
+head hanging rather heavily upon his hand. The flaps were tied aside to
+the fly-ropes. I had a fair view of him as I walked up and down, and I
+came to the conclusion from his looks that Pigey had either a good load
+on, or was in a brown study. While I was thinking about it up comes a
+fellow of the 2&mdash;th, that I used to meet often while we were upon
+picket. He is usually trim, tidy-looking, and is an intelligent fellow,
+but on that day everything about him appeared out of gear. His old grey
+slouch hat had only half a rim, and that hung over his eyes&mdash;hair
+uncombed, face unwashed, hands looking as if he had been scratching
+gravel with them, his blouse dirty and stuffed out above the belt,
+making him as full-breasted as a Hottentot woman, pantaloons <!-- Page 221 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>greasy,
+torn, and unevenly suspended; and to foot up his appearance shoes
+innocent of blacking, and out at the toes. When I saw him, I laughed
+outright. He winked, and asked in an undertone if the General was in,
+stating at the same time that he was there in obedience to an order
+detailing one man for special duty at the General's Head Quarters, 'and
+you know,' said he, 'that the order always is for intelligent
+soldierly-looking men. Well, all our men that have been sent up of that
+stripe have been detained as orderlies, to keep his darkies in wood and
+water, and hold his horses, and we are getting tired of it. <i>I</i> don't
+intend running any risk.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't think you will,' said I, laughing at his make-up.</p>
+
+<p>"Just then I noticed a movement of the General's head, and resumed the
+step. A moment after, the General's eye caught sight of the Detail. He
+eyed him a moment in a doubtful way, and then rubbing his eyes, as if to
+confirm the sight, and straightening up, shouted&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Sergeant of the guard! Sergeant of the guard!'</p>
+
+<p>"The sergeant was forthcoming at something more than a double-quick; and
+with a salute, and 'Here, sir,' stood before the General.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Pigey's right hand extended slowly, pointing towards the Detail,
+who stood with his piece at a rest, wondering what was to come next.</p>
+
+<p>"'Take away that musket, sergeant! and that G&mdash;d d&mdash;n looking thing
+alongside of it. What is it, anyhow?' said the General, with a
+significant emphasis on the word 'thing.'</p>
+
+<p>"And off the sergeant went, followed by the man, who gave a sly look as
+he left."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 222 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>"Pretty well played," said one of the crowd; "but what has that to do
+with a whisky barrel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on, and you will see; I am not through yet.</p>
+
+<p>"About half an hour afterward another man from the same regiment
+presented himself, and asked permission to cross my beat, saying that he
+had been detailed on special duty, and was to report to the General in
+person. This one looked trim enough to pass muster. He presented himself
+at the door of the tent and saluted; but the General had taken two or
+three plugs in the interim, and was slightly oblivious. Anxious to see
+some sport, I suggested that he should call the General.</p>
+
+<p>"'General,' said he, lowly, then louder, all the while saluting, until
+the General awoke with a start.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who the h&mdash;l are you, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I was ordered to report to you in person, sir, for special duty.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Special duty, sir! Has it come to this? Must I assign the duty to be
+performed by each individual man, sir, in the Division, sir!'</p>
+
+<p>"The disheveled hair, flashing eyes, and fierce look of the General,
+startled this new Detail, and he commenced explaining. The General broke
+in abruptly, however, as if suddenly recollecting; and rubbing his
+hands, while his countenance assumed a bland smile:</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes; you are right, sir, right; special duty, sir; yes, sir;
+follow me, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"And the General arose and with somewhat uncertain strides left his
+marquee, and, followed by the man, entered a Sibley partly in its rear.</p>
+
+<p>"'There, sir,' said the General, pointing, with rather a pleased
+countenance; 'do you see that barrel, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir,' replied the Detail, saluting.</p>
+
+<p>"'That barrel holds whisky, sir&mdash;whisky;'&mdash;rising <!-- Page 223 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>upon his toes and
+emphasizing the word; 'and I want you to guard it G&mdash;d d&mdash;&mdash;d well.
+Don't let a d&mdash;n man have a drop, sir. Do you understand, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir,' rejoined the Detail, saluting, and commencing his beat
+around the barrel.</p>
+
+<p>"The General was about leaving the Sibley, when he turned suddenly;</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you drink, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Once and a while, sir,' replied the Detail, saluting.</p>
+
+<p>"'Have you had any lately?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"'By G&mdash;d, sir, I'll give you some, sir;' and he strides into his
+marquee and returns with a tin cup full of liquor, which he placed upon
+the barrel, and told the man to help himself. After the General had
+gone, the Detail did help himself, until his musket lay on one side of
+the Sibley and himself on the other."</p>
+
+<p>"The General knows how to sympathize with a big dry," said one, as the
+crowd laughed over the story.</p>
+
+<p>Pen cannot do justice to the stories abounding in wit and humor
+wherewith soldiers relieve the tedium of the camp. To an old campaigner,
+their appearance in print must seem like a faded photograph, in the
+sight of one who has seen the living original. Characters sparkling with
+humor, such as was never attributed to any storied Joe Miller, abound in
+every camp. The brave Wolfe, previously to the victory which cost him
+his life, is reported to have sung, while floating down the St.
+Lawrence:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Why, soldiers, why,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Should we be melancholy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Whose business 'tis to die?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 224 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>Whether induced in his case by an effort to bolster up the courage of
+his comrades or not, the sentiment has at all times been largely
+practised upon in the army of the Potomac.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 225 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Battle of Fredericksburg&mdash;Screwing Courage up to the Sticking
+Point&mdash;Consolations of a Flask&mdash;Pigeon-hole Nervousness&mdash;Abandonment of
+Knapsacks&mdash;Incidents before, during, and after the Fight.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>In this wintry weather, striking tents meant stripping the log huts of
+the bits of canvas that ordinarily served as the shelter-tents of the
+soldiers. The long rows of huts thus dismantled,&mdash;soldiers at rest in
+ranks, with full knapsacks and haversacks,&mdash;groups of horses saddled and
+bridled, ready for the rider,&mdash;on one of these clear, cold December
+mornings, indicated that the army was again upon the move. Civilians had
+been sent back freighted with letters from those soon to see the serious
+struggle of the field; the sick had been gathered to hospitals nearer
+home; the musicians had reported to the surgeons, and the men were left,
+to the sharp notes of sixty rounds of ball cartridge carried in their
+boxes and knapsacks,&mdash;in the plight of the Massachusetts regiment that
+marched through the mobs of Baltimore, to the music of the
+cartridge-box, in the first April of the Rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>The time intervening between the removal of McClellan and the battle of
+Fredericksburg, was a period of uneasy suspense to the nation at large
+and <!-- Page 226 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>its representatives in the field. Dear as the devoted patriotism,
+the earnest conduct of the Rhode Island Colonel&mdash;the hero of the
+Carolinas and now the leader of the Grand Army of the Potomac&mdash;were to
+the patriotic masses of the nation, the fact of his being an untried
+man, gave room for gloom and foreboding. With the army at large, the
+suspense was accompanied by no lack of confidence. The devotion of the
+Ninth Army Corps for its old commander appeared to have spread
+throughout the army; and his open, manly countenance, bald head, and
+unmistakable whiskers, were always greeted with rounds for "Burny." The
+jealousy of a few ambitious wearers of stars may have been ill concealed
+upon that morning, only to be disclosed shortly to his detriment; but
+the earnest citizen-soldiery were eager, under his guidance, to do
+battle for their country. Time has shown, how much of the misfortune of
+the subsequent week was attributable to imperfect weeding of
+McClellanism at Warrenton.</p>
+
+<p>Like a lion at bay, restless in easy view of the hosts of the
+Rebellious, the army had remained in its camp upon the heights of
+Stafford until the arrival of the pontoons. For miles along the
+Rappahannock, the picket of blue had his counterpart in the picket of
+grey upon the opposite shore. Unremitting labor upon fortifications and
+earthworks, had greatly increased the natural strength of the
+amphitheatre of hills in the rear of Fredericksburg. Countless surmises
+spread in the ranks as to the character and direction of the attack;
+though the whims of those who uttered them were variant as the
+reflections of a kaleidoscope. But the sun, that through the pines that
+morning, shone upon burnished barrels, polished breast-plates, and
+countenances of brave men, <!-- Page 227 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>radiant, as if reflecting their holy
+purpose, has never, since the shining hosts of Heaven were marshalled
+for the suppression of the great prototype of this Rebellion, seen more
+earnest ranks, or a holier cause.</p>
+
+<p>The bugles call "Attention," then "Forward." Horses are rapidly mounted;
+and speedily coming to the shoulder, and facing to the right, the army
+is in motion by the flank towards the river. Far as the eye could see,
+in all directions, there were moving masses of troops. Cowardly beneath
+contempt is the craven, who in such a cause, and at such a time, would
+not feel inspirited by the firm tread of the martial columns.</p>
+
+<p>"Hear 'em! Oh, Hear 'em!" exclaimed an earnest-looking country boy,
+hastily closing a daguerreotype case, into which he had been intently
+gazing, and replacing it in his pocket, as the booming of a heavy siege
+gun upon the Washington Farm, followed instantly by the reports of
+several batteries to the right, broke upon the ear like volleyed
+thunder. A clap of thunder from a clear sky could not have startled him
+more, had he been at work upon his father's farm. His earnest simplicity
+afforded great amusement to his comrades, and for a while made him the
+butt of a New York Regiment that then chanced to be marching abreast.
+Raw recruit as he was, cowardice was no part of his nature, and he
+indignantly repelled the taunts of his comrades. Gloom deep settled was
+visible upon his countenance, however, although firm his step and
+compressed his lip.</p>
+
+<p>"Terence," said he, to the little Irish Corporal who marched by his
+side, as another suggestive artillery fire that appeared to move along
+the entire front, made itself heard, "may I ask a favor of you?"</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 228 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p><p>"Indade ye may, John, and a thousand ov them if ye plaze, to the last
+dhrop in my canteen."</p>
+
+<p>One of those jams so constant and annoying in the movements of large
+masses of men, here gave the opportunity for John to unbosom himself,
+which he did, while both leaned upon the muzzles of their pieces.</p>
+
+<p>"Terence, I do not believe that I will be alongside of you many days,"
+said John, with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter wid ye, boy? if I didn't know ye iver since you
+thrashed that bully in the Zouaves, I wud think ye cowardly."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not fear, Corporal," continued John, more determinedly. "I'm
+looking the danger squarely in the face, and am ready to meet it, and I
+want to be prepared for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Be jabers, John," retorted Terence, "ye should have prepared for it
+before you left home. I saw Father Mahan just before I left, and he
+tould me to do my duty like a thrue Irishman; and that if I was kilt in
+such a cause I wud go straight through, and be hardly asked to stay over
+night in Purgatory. There's my poor brother, peace to his soul;&mdash;and did
+ye hear&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Terence," interrupted John, "I am not afraid of death; and for the
+judgment after death I have made all the preparation I could in my poor
+way, and I can trust that to my Maker; but"&mdash;&mdash;and here John clapped his
+hand over his left breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see," said Terence. "It's a case of disease of the heart."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you, in case I fall, to take the daguerreotype that you will
+find in the inside pocket on the left side of my blouse, and a sealed
+letter, and see that both are sent to the address upon the letter,"
+continued John.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 229 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p><p>"Faith, will I, John. But who tould you that you wud be kilt, and meself
+that's alone and friendless escape? Well, I'll take them, John, if I
+have to go meself; and it's Terence McCarty that will not see her
+suffer; and maybe&mdash;but it's hard seeing how a girl could take a fancy to
+a short curly-headed Irishman, like meself, after having loved a
+sthrapping, straight-haired man like you."</p>
+
+<p>How John relished the winding-up of the corporal's offer could not well
+be seen, as an order to resume the step interrupted the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Progress was slow, necessarily, from the caution required in the
+approach to the river. Over the rolling ground, to an artillery
+accompaniment unequalled in grandeur, the troops trudged slowly along.
+Here and there was a countenance of serious determination, but the great
+mass were gay and reckless, as soldiers proverbially are, of the risks
+the future might hold in reserve.</p>
+
+<p>After a succession of short marches and halts, the forward movement
+appeared to cease about four o'clock in the afternoon, and the men
+quietly rested on their arms, as well as the damp, and in many places
+muddy ground would allow. Towards evening countless fires, fed by the
+dry bushes found in abundance upon the old fields of Virginia, showed
+that amidst war's alarms the men were not unmindful of coffee.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the day, with but brief cessation, artillery firing had
+continued. The booming of the siege guns, mingled with the sharp rattle
+of the light, and the louder roar of the heavy batteries, all causing
+countless echoes among the neighboring hills, completed the carnival of
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>Night crept gradually on, the fires were extinguished, <!-- Page 230 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>the cannonading
+slackened gradually, then ceased, and the vast army, save those whom
+duty kept awake, silently slept under frosted blankets.</p>
+
+<p>Cannonading was resumed at early dawn of the next day, and the slow
+progress of the troops towards the river continued. Before night our
+advance had crossed upon the pontoon bridges, notwithstanding a galling
+fire of the Rebel sharpshooters under cover of the buildings along the
+river, and was firmly established in the town. Late in the day our
+Division turned into a grove of young pines, a short distance in the
+rear of the Phillips House. Upon beds of the dead foliage, soft as
+carpets of velvet, after the fatigues of the day, slumber was sound.</p>
+
+<p>The reveille sounded at early morn of the next day,&mdash;Saturday, the
+memorable thirteenth of December,&mdash;by over three hundred pieces of
+artillery, again aroused the sleeping camps to arms, and in the grey
+fog, the groves and valleys for some miles along the river appeared
+alive with moving masses. As soon as the fog lifted sufficiently, a
+large balloon between us and the river arose, upon a tour of
+observation. It was a fine mark for a rifled battery of the Rebels, and
+some shells passed close to it, and exploded in dangerous proximity to
+our camp.</p>
+
+<p>Under an incessant artillery fire the main movement of the troops across
+the river commenced. Leaving our camp and passing to the right of the
+Phillips mansion, we found our Division, one of a number of columns
+moving in almost parallel lines to the river. On the western slope of
+the hill or ridge upon which the house stood, we came to another halt,
+until our turn to cross should come.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever modern armies may have lost in dazzling appearance, when
+contrasted with the armies of old <!-- Page 231 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>that moved in glittering armor and
+under "banner, shield, and spear," they certainly have lost nothing in
+the enginery of death, and in the sights and sounds of the fight itself.
+A twelve-pound battery under stern old Cato's control, would have sent
+C&aelig;sar and his legions howling from the gates of Rome, and have saved the
+dignity of her Senate. The shock of battle was then a medley of human
+voices, confused with the rattle of the spear upon the shield; now a
+hell of thunder volumed from successive batteries,&mdash;and relieved by
+screaming and bursting shell and rattling musketry. The proper use of a
+single shell would have cleared the plains of Marathon. More
+appropriately can we come down to later times, when</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The old Continentals,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In their ragged regimentals,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Faltered not,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>for the ground upon which our army stood had repeatedly been used as a
+rallying point for troops, and a depot for military stores in
+Continental and Revolutionary times. How great the contrast between the
+armies now upon either side of the Rappahannock, and the numbers, arms,
+and equipage then raised with difficulty from the country at large. Our
+forefathers in some measure foresaw our greatness; but they did not
+foresee the magnitude of the sin of slavery, tolerated by them against
+their better judgment, and now crowding these banks with immense and
+hostile armies. Since that day the country has grown, and with it as
+part of its growth, the iniquity, but the purposes of the God of battles
+prevail nevertheless. The explosion that rends the rock and releases the
+toad confined and dormant for centuries, may not have been intended for
+that end by the unwitting <!-- Page 232 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>miner, nor the civil convulsion that shatters
+a mighty nation to relieve an oppressed people and bestow upon it the
+blessings of civilization, may not have been started with that view by
+foul conspirators.</p>
+
+<p>But while we are digressing, a cavalcade of mounted men have left the
+area in front of the Phillips mansion, and are approaching us upon the
+road at a full gallop. The boys recognize the foremost figure, clad in a
+black pilot frock, his head covered with a regulation felt, the brim of
+which is over his eyes and the top rounded to its utmost capacity, and
+cheer upon cheer for "Burney" run along the column. With a firm seat, as
+his horse clears the railroad track and dashes through the small stream
+near by, he directs his course to the Lacy House on the bank of the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>It was near noon when we passed over the same ground, and taking a road
+to the right of the once tasteful grounds of that mansion, debouched by
+a narrow pass cut through the bank to the water's edge. As we did so,
+some shells thrown at the mounted officers of the Regiment passed close
+to their heads and exploded with a dull sound in the soft ground of the
+bank. With a steady tramp the troops crossed, scarcely the slightest
+motion being perceptible upon the firm double pontoon bridge. Another
+column was moving across upon the bridge below. Gaining the opposite
+bank, the column filed to the left, in what appeared to be a principal
+street of the town. Here knapsacks were unslung and piled in the store
+rooms upon either side.</p>
+
+<p>The few citizens who remained had sought protection from the shells in
+the cellars, and not an inhabitant of the place was to be seen.
+Notwithstanding the heavy concentrated artillery fire,&mdash;beyond <!-- Page 233 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>some few
+buildings burned down,&mdash;nothing like the destruction was visible that
+would be imagined. Deserted by its proper inhabitants, the place had,
+however, a heavy population in the troops that crowded the streets
+parallel with the river. The day previous the Rebels had opened fire
+upon the town. It was continued at intervals, but with little effect.
+Z-i-i-s-s! a round shot sings above your head, and with a sharp thud
+strikes the second story of the brick house opposite, marking its
+passage by a tolerably neat hole through the wall. P-i-i-n-g! screams a
+shell, exploding in a room with noise sufficient to justify the total
+destruction of a block of buildings. The smoke clears away, ceilings may
+be torn, floors and windows shattered, but the building, to an outside
+observer, little damaged.</p>
+
+<p>From an early hour in the morning the musketry had been incessant,&mdash;now
+in volleys, and now of the sharp rattling nature that denotes severe
+skirmishing. On the left, where more open ground permitted extended
+offensive movements, the firing was particularly heavy. But above it all
+was the continuous roar of artillery, and the screaming and explosion of
+shells. To this music the troops in light order and ready for the fray,
+marched up a cross street, and in the shelter of the buildings of
+another street on the outer edge of the place and parallel with the
+river, stood at arms,&mdash;passing on their way out hundreds of wounded men
+of different regiments, on stretchers and on foot, some with ghastly
+wounds, and a few taking the advantage of the slightest scratch to pass
+from front to rear. Legs and arms carelessly heaped together alongside
+of one of the amputating tents in the rear of the Phillips House, and
+passed in the march of the day before, had prepared the nerves <!-- Page 234 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>of the
+men somewhat for this most terrible ordeal for fresh troops. Many of the
+wounded men cheered lustily as the men marched by, and were loudly
+cheered in return, while here and there an occasional skulker would tell
+how his regiment was cut to pieces, and like Job's servant he alone
+left.</p>
+
+<p>From this point a fine view could be had of the encircling hills, with
+their crowning earthworks, commanding the narrow plateau in our
+immediate front. On the right and centre the Rebel line was not to be
+assailed, but by advancing over ground that could be swept by hundreds
+of pieces of artillery, while to protect an advancing column our
+batteries from their position must be powerless for good. A stone wall
+following somewhat the shape of the ridge ran along its base. Properly
+banked in its rear, it afforded an admirable protection for their
+troops. As there was no chance for success in storming these works, the
+object in making the attempt was doubtless to divert the Rebel attention
+from their right.</p>
+
+<p>Column after column of the flower of the army, had during the day
+charged successively in mad desperation upon that wall; but not to reach
+it. Living men could not stand before that heavy and direct musketry,
+and the deadly enfilading cannonade from batteries upon the right and
+left. The thickly strewn plain attested at once the heroic courage of
+the men, and the hopelessness of the contest.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, we're in for it," said a Lieutenant on his way from the right.
+"Old Pigey has just had three staving swigs from his flask, and they are
+all getting ready. There goes 'Tommy Totten,'" as the bugle call for
+"forward" is familiarly called in the army.</p>
+
+<p>Our course was continued to the left&mdash;two regiments <!-- Page 235 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>marching
+abreast&mdash;until we neared a main road leading westward from the town. In
+the meantime the movement had attracted the Rebel fire, and at the last
+cross street a poor fellow of the 2&mdash;th Regiment was almost cut in two
+by a shell which passed through the ranks of our Regiment and exploded
+upon the other side of the street, but without doing further damage. At
+the main road we filed to the right, and amid dashing Staff officers and
+orderlies, wounded men and fragments of regiments broken and
+disorganized, proceeded on our way to the front. There was a slight
+depression in the road, enough to save the troops, and shot and shell
+sang harmlessly above our heads. When the head of the column&mdash;really its
+rear&mdash;as we were left in front, was abreast of a swampy strip of meadow
+land, at the further end of which was a tannery, our Brigade filed again
+to the right. The occupation of this meadow appeared to be criminally
+purposeless, as our line of attack was upon the left of the road; while
+it was in full view and at the easy range of a few hundred yards from a
+three-gun Rebel battery. The men were ordered to lie down, which they
+did as best they could from the nature of the ground, while the mounted
+officers of the Division and Brigade gathered under the shelter of the
+brick tannery building.</p>
+
+<p>The movement was scarcely over, before one head and then another
+appeared peering through the embrasures of the earthwork, then a mounted
+officer upon a lively sorrel cantered as if for observation a short
+distance to the left of the work. Some sharpshooters in our front,
+protected slightly by the ground which rose gently towards the west,
+tried their breech-loaders upon him. At 450 yards there was <!-- Page 236 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>certainty
+enough in the aim to make the music of their bullets unpleasant, and he
+again sought the cover of the work. An upright puff of smoke,&mdash;then a
+large volumed puff horizontally,&mdash;shrill music in its short flight,&mdash;a
+dull, heavy sound as the shell explodes in the soft earth under our
+ranks,&mdash;and one man thrown ten feet into the air, fell upon his back in
+the ranks behind him, while his two comrades on his left were killed
+outright, his Lieutenant near by mortally wounded, a leg of his comrade
+on the right cut in two, and a dozen in the neighborhood bespattered
+with the soft ground and severely contused. Shells that exploded in the
+air above us, or screamed over our heads; rifle balls that whizzed
+spitefully near, were now out of consideration. The motions of loading
+and firing, and as we were in the line of direction, the shell itself,
+could be seen with terrible distinctness. There was the dread certainty
+of death at every discharge. All eyes were turned toward the battery,
+and at each puff, the "bravest held his breath" until the smothered
+explosion announced that the danger was over. From our front ranks, who
+had gradually crept up the side of the hill, an incessant fire was kept
+up; but the pieces could be worked with but little exposure, and it was
+harmless. Fortunately the shells buried themselves deeply before
+exploding, and were mainly destructive in their direct passage. Again
+the horseman cantered gaily to his former place of observation on the
+left; but our sharpshooters had the range, and his fine sorrel was
+turned to the work limping very discreditably. This trifling injury was
+all that we could inflict in return for the large loss of life and limb.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Lieutenant, poor John is gone!" said the <!-- Page 237 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>little Irish Corporal,
+coming to the side of that officer.</p>
+
+<p>"What, killed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ivery bit of it. I have just turned him over, and shure he is as dead
+as he was before he was born. That last shot murthered the boy. It is
+Terence McCarthy that will do his duty by him, and may be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Corporal! to your post," broke in the Lieutenant. "Old Pigey is taking
+another pull at the flask, and we will move in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>The surmise of the Lieutenant was correct. "Tommy Totten" again called
+the men to ranks, and right in front, the head of the column took the
+pike on another advance. The Rebels seeing the movement, handled their
+battery with great rapidity and dexterity, and shells in rapid
+succession were thrown into the closed ranks, but without creating
+confusion. Among others, a Major of the last Regiment upon the road, an
+old Mexican campaigner, and a most valuable officer, fell mortally
+wounded just as he was about leaving the field, and met the fate, that
+by one of those singular premonitions before noticed in this
+chapter,&mdash;so indicative by their frequency of a connexion in life
+between man's mortal and immortal part,&mdash;he had already anticipated.</p>
+
+<p>It was now about four o'clock in the afternoon. The day was somewhat
+misty, and at this time the field of battle was fast becoming shrouded
+by the commingled mist and smoke.</p>
+
+<p>On the left of the road the Brigade formed double line of battle along
+the base and side of a rather steep slope which led to the plateau
+above. The ground was muddy and well trodden, and littered with dead
+bodies in spots that marked the localities of exploded <!-- Page 238 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>shells. Hungry
+and fatigued with the toil of the day, yet expectant of a conflict which
+must prove the death scene of many, the men sank upon their arms. From
+this same spot, successive lines of battle had charged during the day.
+Brave souls! With rushing memories of home and kindred and friends, they
+shrank not because the path of duty was one of danger.</p>
+
+<p>We were there as a forlorn hope for the final effort of the field. With
+great exertion and consummate skill upon the part of its Commander, a
+battery had been placed in position on the summit of the slope. Officers
+and men worked nobly, handling the pieces with coolness and rapidity.
+What they accomplished, could not be seen. What they suffered, was
+frightfully apparent. Man after man was shot away, until in some
+instances they were too weak-handed to keep the pieces from following
+their own recoil down the slope, confusing our ranks and bruising the
+men. Volunteers sprang forward to assist in working the guns. The
+gallant Commander, almost unaided, kept order in what would otherwise
+have been a mingled herd of confused men and frightened horses. No force
+could withstand the hurricane of hurtling shot and shell that swept the
+summit.</p>
+
+<p>"Lieutenant, take command of that gun," was the short, sharp, nervous
+utterance of a General of Division, as in one of his tours of random
+riding he suddenly stopped his horse in front of a boy of nineteen, a
+Lieutenant of infantry, who previously to bringing his squad of men into
+service, a few brief months before, had never seen a full battery.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!" he replied, in unfeigned astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"By G&mdash;d! sir, I command you as the Com<!-- Page 239 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>manding General of this
+Division, sir, to take command of that piece of artillery."</p>
+
+<p>"General, I am entirely unacquainted with&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Take command of that piece, sir. You should be ready to enter any arm
+of the service," replied the General, flourishing his sword in a
+threatening manner.</p>
+
+<p>"General, I will do my duty; but I can't sight a cannon, sir. I will
+hand cartridge, turn the screw, steady the wheel, or I'll ram&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ram&mdash;ram!"&mdash;echoed the General with an oath, and off he started on
+another of his mad rides.</p>
+
+<p>"Fall in," was passed rapidly along the line, and a moment after our
+Brigadier, cool as if exercising his command in the evolutions of a
+peaceful field, rode along the ranks.</p>
+
+<p>"Boys, you are ordered to take that stone wall, and must do it with the
+bayonet."</p>
+
+<p>Words full of deadly import to men who for long hours had been in full
+view of the impregnable works, and the field of blood in their front.
+Ominous as was the command, it was greeted with cheers; and with
+bayonets at a charge, up that difficult slope,&mdash;preserving their line as
+best they could while breaking to pass the guns, wounded and struggling
+horses, and bodies thickly strewn over that most perilous of positions
+for artillery,&mdash;the troops passed at a rapid step. The ground upon the
+summit had been laid out in small lots, as is customary in the suburbs
+of towns. Many of the partition fences were still remaining, with here
+and there gaps, or with upper rails lowered for the passage of troops.
+For a moment, while crossing these fallow fields, there was a lull in
+the direct musketry. The enfilading fire from batteries right and left
+still continued; <!-- Page 240 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>the fierce fitful flashes of the bursting shells
+becoming more visible with the approach of night. Onward we went,
+picking our way among the fallen dead and wounded of Brigades who had
+preceded us in the fight, with feet fettered with mud, struggling to
+keep place in the line. Several regiments lying upon their arms were
+passed over in the charge.</p>
+
+<p>"Captain," said a mounted officer when we had just crossed a fence
+bounding what appeared to be an avenue of the town, "close up on the
+right." The Captain partly turned, to repeat the command to his men,
+when the bullets from a sudden flash of waving fire that for the instant
+lit up the summit of the stone wall for its entire length, prostrated
+him with a mortal wound, and dismounted his superior. Pity that his eye
+should close in what seemed to be the darkest hour of the cause dearest
+to his soul!</p>
+
+<p>Volley after volley of sheeted lead was poured into our ranks. We were
+in the proper position on the plain, and a day's full practice gave them
+exact range and terrible execution. In the increased darkness, the
+flashes of musketry alone were visible ahead, while to the right and
+left the gloom was lit up by the lurid flashing of their batteries. This
+very darkness, in concealing the danger, and the loss, doubtless did its
+share in permitting the men to cross the lines of dead that marked the
+halting-place of previous troops. Still onward they advanced,&mdash;the
+thunder of artillery above them,&mdash;the groans of the wounded rising from
+below;&mdash;frightful gaps are made in their ranks by exploding shells, and
+many a brave boy staggers and falls to rise no more, in that storm of
+spitefully whizzing lead.</p>
+
+<p>Regularity in ranks was simply impossible. Many <!-- Page 241 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>officers and men
+gathered about a brick house on the right&mdash;a narrow lawn leading
+directly to the fatal wall was crowded; indeed, caps bearing the
+regimental numbers were found, as has since been ascertained, close by
+the wall, and a Lieutenant who was stunned in the fight and fell almost
+at its base, was taken prisoner. Nearly every officer who had entered
+the fight mounted, was at this time upon foot. In the tempest of bullets
+that everywhere prevailed the destruction of the force was but a
+question of brief time, and to prevent further heroic but vain
+sacrifices the order to retire was given. With the Brigade, the Regiment
+fell back, leaving one-third of its number in dead and wounded to hallow
+the remembrance of that fatal field.</p>
+
+<p>"This way, Pap! This is the way to get out safe," shouted a Captain as
+he rose, from the rear of a pile of rubbish, amid the laughter of the
+men now on their backward move. The burly form of the exhorting Colonel
+was seen to follow the no less burly form of the Captain, and father and
+son were spared for other fields.</p>
+
+<p>An effort was made to reform after the firing had slackened, but the
+increased darkness prevented the marshalling of the thinned ranks. Out
+of range of the still not infrequent bullets and occasional shell, and
+drowsy from fatigue, the men again lay upon their arms at the foot of
+the slope; and the battle of Fredericksburg was over.</p>
+
+<p>What happened upon the left, where the main battle should have been
+fought, and why Franklin was upon the left at all, are problems that
+perhaps the reader can pass upon to better advantage than the writer of
+these pages. His "corner of the <!-- Page 242 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>fight" has been described, truthfully
+at least, whatever the other failings may be.</p>
+
+<p>We had left the field; but the Rebels had not as yet gained it. Pickets
+were thrown out to within eighty yards of their line, and details
+scattered over the field to bear off the wounded. No lights were
+allowed, and the least noise was sure to bring a shell or a shower of
+bullets. In consequence, their removal was attended with difficulty. The
+evil of the practice too prevalent among company commanders, of sending
+skulkers and worthless men in obedience to a detail for the ambulance
+corps, was now horribly apparent. Large numbers of the dead, and even
+the dying, were found with their pockets turned inside out, rifled of
+their contents by these harpies in uniform.</p>
+
+<p>But little rest was to be had that night. At 8 <span class="smcap">p. m.</span> the troops were
+marched back into the town, only to be brought out again at midnight and
+re-formed in line of battle about a hundred yards distant from the wall.
+The moon had now risen, and in its misty light the upturned faces of the
+dead lost nothing of ghastliness. Horrible, too, beyond
+description&mdash;ringing in the ears of listeners for a lifetime&mdash;were the
+shrieks and groans of the wounded,&mdash;principally Rebel,&mdash;from a strip of
+neutral ground lying between the pickets of the two armies. Whatever the
+object of reforming line of battle may have been, it appears to have
+been abandoned, as after a short stay we were returned to the town and
+assigned quarters in the street in front of the Planters' House.</p>
+
+<p>Fredericksburg was a town of hospitals. All the churches and public
+buildings, very many private residences, and even the pavements in their
+respective <!-- Page 243 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>fronts, were crowded with wounded. In one of the principal
+churches on a lower street, throned in a pulpit which served as a
+dispensary, and surrounded by surgical implements and appliances,
+flourished our little Dutch Doctor, never more completely in his
+element. Very nice operations, as he termed them, were abundant.</p>
+
+<p>"How long can I live?" inquired a fine-looking, florid-faced young man
+of two-and-twenty, with a shattered thigh, who had just been brought in
+and had learned from the Doctor that amputation could not save his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Shust fifteen minutes," was the reply, as the Doctor opened and closed
+his watch in a cold, business way.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I see a Chaplain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shaplain! Shaplain! eh? Shust one tried to cross, and he fell tead on
+bridge. Not any follow him, I shure you. Too goot a chance to die, for
+Shaplains. What for you want him? Bray, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The dying man, folding his hands upon his breast, nodded assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Ver well, I bray," and at the side of the stretcher the Doctor kneeled,
+and with fervid utterance, and in the solemn gutturals of the German,
+repeated the Lord's prayer. When he arose to resume his labor, the
+soldier was beyond the reach of earthly supplication; but a smile was
+upon his countenance.</p>
+
+<p>The Sabbath, with the main body of our troops, was a day of rest. Chance
+shots from Rebel sharpshooters, who had crept to within long range of
+the cross streets, were from time to time heard, and shell occasionally
+screamed over the town. To ears accustomed to the uproar of the
+preceding days, however, they were not in the least annoying. Over
+<!-- Page 244 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>one-half of the army were comfortably housed, bringing into requisition
+for their convenience the belongings and surroundings of the abandoned
+dwellings. Notwithstanding our slow approach, the evidences of hasty
+exit on the part of the inhabitants were abundant on all sides.
+Warehouses filled with flour and tobacco were duly appreciated by the
+men, while parlors floored in Brussels, and elegantly ornamented, were
+in many instances wantonly destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom," said a non-commissioned officer, addressing a private whom we
+have before met in these pages, "where did you get that box?"</p>
+
+<p>"Get it? Why I confiscated it. Just look at the beauties," and opening a
+fine mahogany case, Tom disclosed a pair of highly finished duelling
+pistols.</p>
+
+<p>"What right have you to confiscate it?" retorted the Sergeant.</p>
+
+<p>"It is contraband of war, and Rebel property. Record evidence of that.
+Just look at this letter found with it," and Tom pulled out of an inside
+pocket of his blouse a letter written in a most miserable scrawl,
+assuring some "Dear Capting" of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Here's my heart and here's my hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">For the man who fit for Dixy land."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Monday passed in much the same manner. About 9 <span class="smcap">p. m.</span> of that day the
+Regiment, with others, was employed in throwing up breastworks, and
+digging rifle-pits on the west of the town. Expecting to hold it on the
+morrow against what they knew would be a terrible artillery fire, the
+men worked faithfully, and by midnight, works strong as the ground would
+admit of, were prepared. It was a <!-- Page 245 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>perilous work; performed in the very
+face of the enemy's pickets;&mdash;but was only an extensive ruse, as at 1 <span class="smcap">a.
+m.</span> we were quietly withdrawn and assigned a position in the left of the
+town. The sidewalks were muddy, and disengaging shutters from the
+windows, loose boards from fences,&mdash;anything to keep them above the
+mud,&mdash;the men composed themselves for slumber. Before 2 o'clock an
+excited Staff officer had the Brigade again in line, and after moving
+and halting until 4 <span class="smcap">a. m.</span>, we crossed the lower bridge in much lighter
+order than when we entered the place; for notwithstanding urgent
+solicitations of officers, from Brigadier down, permission was refused
+the men to obtain their knapsacks. Besides the loss of several thousand
+dollars to the Government in blankets and overcoats, hundreds of
+valuable knapsacks, and even money in considerable sums, were lost to
+the men. The matter is all the more disgraceful when we consider the
+abundance of time, and the fact, that details had been sent by the
+Colonels to arrange the knapsacks upon the sidewalk, in order that they
+could be taken up while the command would pass. It was marched by
+another route, however, and in the cold, pelting rain, the men, while
+marching up the opposite slopes of the Rappahannock, had ample reason to
+reflect upon the cold forethought that could crowd a Head-quarters'
+train, and deprive them of their proper allowance of clothing. Six hours
+later, our Division had the credit of furnishing about the only booty
+left by the army that the Rebels found upon their re&ouml;ccupation of the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>Sadly and quietly, the troops retrod the familiar mud of their old camp
+grounds. The movement had been a failure&mdash;a costly one in private and
+national <!-- Page 246 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>sacrifices,&mdash;and no one felt it more keenly than the
+broad-shouldered, independent, and much injured Burnside. Strange that
+this costly sacrifice should have been offered up on ground hallowed in
+our early struggle for freedom&mdash;that the bodies of our brave volunteers,
+stripped by traitor hands, should lie naked on the plain that bears a
+monument to that woman of many virtues, "Mary, the mother of
+Washington"&mdash;that ground familiar to the early boyhood of the Great
+Patriot, should have been the scene of one of the noblest, although
+unsuccessful, contests of the war. Fit altar for such a sacrifice! A
+shrine for all time of devout patriots, who will here renew their
+vows,&mdash;of fidelity to this God-given Government,&mdash;of eternal enmity to
+traitors,&mdash;and thus consecrate to posterity the heavy population we have
+left in the Valley.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 247 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Sorrows of the Sutler&mdash;The Sutler's Tent&mdash;Generals manufactured by
+the Dailies&mdash;Fighting and Writing&mdash;A Glandered
+Horse&mdash;Courts-martial&mdash;Mania of a Pigeon-hole General on the
+Subject&mdash;Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel in Strait-Jackets.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>If the reader can imagine the contents of his nearest corner grocery
+thrown confusedly together under a canvas covering, he will have a
+tolerably correct idea of the interior of a Sutler's tent. Probably, to
+make the likeness more truthful, sardines, red herring, and cheese,
+should be more largely represented than is customary in a corner
+grocery.</p>
+
+<p>Our Sutler, although upon his first campaign, was no novice in the
+craft. He could be hail-fellow-well-met with the roughest of crowds
+thronging the outside of his rude counter, and at the same time keep an
+eye upon the cash drawer. And he was behind no one in "casting his bread
+upon the waters," in the shape of trifling presents and hospitable
+welcomes, in order that it might return at the next pay-day.
+Notwithstanding all his tact, however, Tom Green was in many respects an
+awkward, haphazard fellow, continually in difficulty, although as
+continually fortunate in overcoming it. His <!-- Page 248 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>troubles were known to the
+Regiment, as the Sutler's interests were individualized to a great
+extent, and while all might be amused, he was never beyond the pale of
+sympathy. During the long winter evenings, the barrels and boxes in his
+tent seated a jovial crowd of officers, who in games and with
+thrice-told stories, would while away what would otherwise be tedious
+hours. Not unfrequently was the Chaplain, who quartered close by,
+disturbed with a "sound of revelry by night," to have his good-humor
+restored in the morning by a can of pickled lobster or brandied
+cherries.</p>
+
+<p>On one of the merriest of the merry nights of the holidays, our Western
+Virginia Captain was the centre of a group of officers engaged in gazing
+intently upon a double page wood-cut, in one of the prominent
+illustrated weeklies, that at one time might have represented the
+storming of Fort Donelson, but then did duty by way of illustrating a
+"Gallant Charge at Fredericksburg."</p>
+
+<p>"There it is again," said the Captain. "Not one half of our Generals are
+made by honest efforts. Their fighting is nothing like the writing that
+is done for them. They don't rely so much upon their own genius as upon
+that of the reporter who rides with their Staffs. By George, if old
+Rosey in Western Virginia&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dry up on that, Captain," interrupted a brother officer. "Old Pigey is
+the hero of the day. He understands himself. Didn't you notice how
+concertedly all the dailies after the fight talked about the cool,
+courageous man of science; and just look at this how it backs it all up.
+Old Rosey, as you call him, never had half as many horses shot under him
+at one time. Just see them kicking and floundering <!-- Page 249 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>about him, and the
+General away ahead on foot, between our fire and the Rebels, as cool as
+when he took the long pull at his flask in the hollow."</p>
+
+<p>"And half the men will testify that that was the only cool moment he saw
+during the whole fight."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," continued the other, "he has the inside track of the
+reporters, and he is all right with all who 'smell the battle from
+afar.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's no denying old Pigey was brave, but he was as crazy as a
+boy with a bee in his breeches," said the Captain, holding up the
+caricature to the admiration of the crowded tent. "Our Division gets the
+credit of it at any rate. Bully for our Division!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not one word," breaks in the Poetical Lieutenant, "of Butterfield, with
+his cool, Napoleonic look, as he rode along our line preparatory to the
+charge; or of Fighting Old Joe, unwilling to give up the field; or of
+our difficulty in clambering up the slope, getting by the artillery,
+which made ranks confused, and so forth, but</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'On we move, though to self-slaughter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Regular as rolling water.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Never mind criticizing, boys. It will sound well at home. We did our
+duty, at any rate, if we did not do it exactly as represented in the
+picture. The reporter was not there to see for himself, and he must take
+somebody's word, and it is a feather in our cap that he has taken
+Pigey's."</p>
+
+<p>The conversation was at this stage interrupted by the sudden entry of
+the Adjutant, with a loud call for the Sutler. That individual,
+notwithstanding the unusual excitement of the night, had been singularly
+quiet. Rising from his buffalo in the corner, <!-- Page 250 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>he approached the
+Adjutant with a countenance so full of apprehension and alarm as to
+elicit the inquiry from the crowd of "What's the matter with the
+Sutler?"</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't felt well since I told him a few hours ago," said a
+Lieutenant, a lawyer by profession, "that Sutlers were liable to be
+court-martialed."</p>
+
+<p>"And he'll feel worse," adds the Adjutant, "when he hears this letter
+read."</p>
+
+<p>Amid urgent calls for the letter, the Adjutant mounted a box, and by the
+light of a dip held by the Captain, proceeded to read a letter signed by
+the Commanding General of the Division, and considerably blurred, which
+ran somewhat in this wise:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Colonel</span>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Is your Sutler sagacious?</p>
+
+<p>"Has he ordinary honesty?</p>
+
+<p>"Has he the foresight common among business men? Is he likely to be
+imposed upon?"</p></div>
+
+<p>The letter was greeted with roars of laughter that were not diminished
+by the dismay of the Sutler. The Adjutant was forthwith requested by one
+of the crowd to suggest to the Colonel to reply&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That our Sutler was a sagacious animal. That he had the honesty
+ordinary among Sutlers. That if the General was disposed to deal with
+him, he would find out that he had the foresight common among business
+men, especially in the way of calculating his profits; and that as far
+as making change was concerned, he was not at all likely to be imposed
+upon."</p>
+
+<p>Loud calls were now made upon the Sutler for an explanation, and with
+look and tones that indicated that with him at least it was no laughing
+matter, he commenced&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 251 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>"On the forenoon of the day that we crossed into Fredericksburg&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We crossed!" roared the Captain. "Well, that's cool for a man who
+suddenly recollected when that Quarter-Master was killed by a shell near
+the Lacy House, just before our brigade crossed, that he had business in
+Washington."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, that <i>you</i> crossed," continued the Sutler, correcting
+himself hastily, to allow the crowd to make as little capital as
+possible out of his blunder, "the General sent for me, and said that he
+had been informed that I thought of going to Washington, and wanted to
+know whether I would take a horse with me;&mdash;pointing to one that was
+blanketed, and that one of his orderlies was leading. I looked upon it
+as an order to take the horse, and thought that I might as well put a
+good face on the matter. So I told him that I would take it with
+pleasure. Well, I mounted the horse, thinking that I might as well ride,
+and took the road for Aquia. But I found out after half an hour's
+travel, that the horse was very weak,&mdash;in fact hardly able to bear me,
+and so I took the halter strap in hand and trudged along by his side.
+Presently I noticed a very bad smell. Carrion is so common here along
+the road that I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but the smell
+continued, and got worse, and I thought it strange that the carrion
+should keep with me. By and by I noticed his nostrils, and then found
+out to my rage that I, a Regimental Sutler, accustomed to drive good
+nags, was leading a glandered horse in a country where horse flesh was
+cheap as dirt. Well, at Aquia we had a great time getting the horse on
+the boat,&mdash;indeed, he fell off the gangway, and we had to fish him out
+of the water. The passengers <!-- Page 252 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>crowded me, with the horse, into a little
+corner in the stern of the boat, and looked at me as if I deserved
+lynching for bringing him on board. But that was nothing to the trouble
+I had with him in Washington. After the boat landed, I led that horse
+around from one stable to another in Washington for four mortal hours,
+but couldn't get him in anywhere; and besides they threatened to
+prosecute me if I did not have him shot. Finding that I could do nothing
+else, I gave a man three dollars to have him taken away and shot. The
+thing bothered me mightily. I did not want to write to old Pigey, for
+fear that he might take some course to prevent me from collecting the
+greenbacks due me in the Regiment, and I did not like to tell him in
+person. Well, I have been putting it off and off for nearly a week past
+since my return&mdash;my mind made up to tell him all about it, but delaying
+as long as possible, until this afternoon he happened to see me, and in
+about half an hour afterward sent for me. It was after three o'clock, an
+unsafe time with the General, and I expected there would be the d&mdash;&mdash;l
+to pay. From the way in which he asked me to be seated, shook hands with
+me, and went on inquiring about my stock and business, and so forth, I
+saw at once that he knew nothing of it. All the while I was fairly
+trembling in my boots. At last says he:</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, how did you leave the horse?' and without waiting for an answer,
+went on to say that he was a favorite animal, highly recommended by the
+Ohio Captain he had purchased him from, and wound up by repeating the
+inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"There was no chance to back out now, and gathering my breath for the
+effort, said I&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'General, I regret to say, that your horse is dead.'</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 253 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p><p>"'Dead! did you say?' echoed the General, rising.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir; I was compelled to have him shot.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Shot! did you say, sir?' advancing; 'shot! compelled to have him shot,
+sir! By G&mdash;d, sir, I would like to know, sir, who would <i>compel</i> you to
+have a horse of mine shot, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He was glandered,' said I timidly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sir! sir!! sir!!! d&mdash;&mdash;d lie, sir,&mdash;mouth as sweet as sugar. D&mdash;&mdash;d
+lie, sir,' retorted the General.</p>
+
+<p>"The General was furiously mad, his eyes flashing, and all the while he
+took quick and long steps up and down his marquee.</p>
+
+<p>"I attempted an explanation, but he would listen to none; and kept on
+repeating 'glandered!' 'shot!' and scowling at times at me;&mdash;saying,
+too, 'By G&mdash;d, sir, this matter must be investigated.'</p>
+
+<p>"'General,' said I, at length, 'in justice to myself, I would like'&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Justice to yourself!' shouted the General, looking at me as if he
+believed me mean enough to murder my grandmother. 'Who the h&mdash;l ever
+heard of a sutler being entitled to any justice?&mdash;&mdash;you, sir, I'll teach
+you justice. Get out of my tent, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it best not to wait for another opportunity to get away, and
+as I sloped I heard the General swearing at me until I had passed the
+Surgeon's tent. You see what makes the matter worse with the General is,
+that he has been told several times that the horse was unsound, but
+would not admit that as much of a horseman as he professed to be, had
+been taken in by the 'Buckeye Officer.'"</p>
+
+<p>The recital of the story appeared to have lightened the load upon the
+breast of the sutler, and he wound up somewhat humorously, by telling
+the crowd that there was another on the list to be court-martialed, <!-- Page 254 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>and
+that they must give him all possible aid and comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"Be easy, sutler! there are too many ahead of you on that list,"
+observed an officer. "Your case can't be reached for some time yet. It
+is admitted on all sides that our material, officers and men, are as
+good as any in the army; and, for all that, although one of the smallest
+divisions, we have more courts-martial than any other division. Why,
+just look at it. A day or two before the battle of Fredericksburg,
+twenty-three officers were released from arrest. Thirteen of them,
+Lieutenants under charges for lying, as old Pigey termed it, when, in
+fact, it was nothing more than a simple misunderstanding of one of his
+night orders, such as any men might make. Poor fellows! over one-half of
+them are out of his power now; but I wouldn't wonder if the General
+would be presumptuous and malignant enough to respectfully refer their
+cases to the Chancery of Heaven, with endorsements to suit himself!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that brave Lieutenant," said the Captain, "who asked permission
+of the Colonel to charge with our regiment when himself and squad had
+become separated from his own, has been reinstated. You know that at the
+time old Pigey gave permission to the Colonels to send Volunteer
+Officers before the board for examination, the Lieutenant-Colonel of his
+regiment, instead of sending him a written order, as was customary,
+sought him out when engaged in conversation with some non-commissioned
+officers of his command, and in an insulting manner gave him a verbal
+order to report. They had some hot talk about it, and in the course of
+it the Lieutenant said that 'he'd be d&mdash;&mdash;d if he came into the army to
+study tactics; he came to fight,' and on the strength <!-- Page 255 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>of that, the
+General had him tried and dismissed. Our Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel
+sent up a statement to 'Burney,' giving a glowing account of his gallant
+conduct in the fight; and the General seeing how dead in earnest he was
+when he said he came to fight, restored him to his position."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very much afraid," said the Lieutenant, slowly, interrupted by
+frequent whiffs at a well-colored meerschaum, "that the Colonel and
+Lieutenant-Colonel will have difficulty to save themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Save themselves!" echoed several, from different parts of the tent,
+their faces hardly visible through the increasing smoke. "Why, what's in
+the wind now?"</p>
+
+<p>"A good deal more than a great many of you think," continued the
+Adjutant. "I think I see the dawning of considerable difficulty. The
+Colonel, you recollect, was compelled to correct our Division-General in
+some of his commands, to prevent confusion; and the General, although
+clearly in the wrong, submitted with a bad grace; and then at the last
+review you all remember how a whiffet chanced to yelp at the heels of
+the Staff horses, and how the General&mdash;it was after three, you
+recollect, G&mdash;d d&mdash;&mdash;d the puppy and its ancestry, particularly its
+mother, until his Staff tittered behind him, and the Regiments of his
+command, officers and men, particularly ours, fairly roared. And then,
+too, when General Burnside saluted the colors, and requested Pigey to
+ride along, how he started off with his Staff, leaving us all at a
+'Present Arms;' and how the quick eye of Old Joe saw the blunder; and
+how he called the General's attention to it, without effect, until
+'Burney' sharply yelled out, 'General, you had better bring your men to
+a shoulder, sir;' and then, how <!-- Page 256 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>the General, amid increased tittering
+and laughter, rode back, and with a face like scarlet squeaked
+out&mdash;'Division! Shoulder arms!' Now I have heard that the General blames
+the Field Officers of our Regiment with a good deal of that laughter;
+and that and this Sutler matter will make him provide a pretext for
+another Court-martial at an early day."</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Double, double, toil and trouble,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>said the poetical Lieutenant. "Why, the Adjutant talks as if he could
+see the witches over the pot; certainly&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'No lateness of life gives him mystical lore.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"No, but&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'Coming events cast their shadows before.'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>continued the Adjutant, finishing the couplet. "I do not know that any
+gift of prophecy is given unto me, but I will venture to predict that
+the pretext will be that very order,&mdash;outrageous and unreasonable as it
+is,&mdash;that our Brigadier not only flatly and positively refused to obey
+before he left, but told his command that it was unlawful and
+unreasonable, and should not be obeyed."</p>
+
+<p>"What! that dress-coat order," cried the Western Virginia Captain,
+springing to his feet; "compel a man who has two new blouses, and who
+belongs to a regiment that came out with blouses and never had
+dress-coats, to put a dress-coat in his knapsack besides, when his
+clothing account is almost exhausted, and the campaign only half
+through. Is that the order you mean? By George, you must think that old
+Pigey is only going to live and do <!-- Page 257 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>business after three o'clock in the
+afternoon, if you think that he will insist upon that order. Our
+Brigadier did right to disobey it. Old Rosey would have put any officer
+in irons, who&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Captain," resumed the Adjutant, "unfortunately we are not in
+Western Virginia, and not under old Rosey, as you call him, but in the
+Army of the Potomac, where Red Tape clogs progress more than Virginia
+mud ever did, and where position is attained, not so much by the merit
+of the officer, as by the hold he may be able to get upon the favoritism
+of the War Department."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible," continued the Captain, thrusting his hands into the
+lowest depths of his breeches pockets, and casting upon the Adjutant a
+half inquiring, half reflecting look, "that this Regiment, which the
+General himself admits is one of the best disciplined in his Division,
+and which has been one of the most harmonious and orderly, is to be
+imposed upon in this way by a whimsical superior officer, who, whatever
+his reputation for science may be, has shown himself over and over again
+to have no sense! I tell you, our men can't stand it. Just look at my
+own Company, for instance, nearly all married men, families dependent
+upon them for support, and now when they have each two lined blouses, as
+good as new, and their clothing account about square, they are to take
+seven dollars and a half of their hard earned pay&mdash;more than half a
+month's wages&mdash;and buy a coat that can be of no service, and that must
+be thrown away the first march. I do not believe that the Government
+designs that our Volunteer Regiments should be compelled to take both
+blouses and dress coats. The General had better enter into partnership
+with some shoddy contractor, <!-- Page 258 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>if he intends giving orders of this kind.
+I tell you, the men will not take them."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Captain, no 'murmuring or muttering' against the powers that be,"
+said the Adjutant. "The men will either take them, in case the order is
+made, or go to the Rip-raps. I am inclined to think that the Field
+Officers will not see the men imposed upon. And at the same time they
+will not bear the brunt of disobeying the order themselves, and not let
+the men run any risk. It is hard to tell," continued the Adjutant, in a
+measured tone, refilling his pipe as he spoke, "what it will result in;
+but Pigey is in power, and like all in authority, has his toadies about
+him, and you may make up your minds that he will not be sparing in his
+charges, or in the testimony to support them. Our Colonel and
+Lieut.-Colonel, I know, feel outraged at the bare idea of being
+subjected to such an order. They are both earnest men, have both made
+heavy sacrifices to enter the service, and have never failed in duty,
+although, like most volunteer officers of spirit, they are somewhat
+restiff under authority. The Colonel, being an old soldier, and
+thoroughly acquainted with his work, is especially restiff under the
+authority of an officer so poorly fitted for his position as our
+Division General. But our turn must come. Every Regiment in the Division
+has suffered from his Court-martialling and studied interference, and so
+far we have been fortunate enough to escape. And with the insight I now
+have, I believe the glandered horse and the little whiffet that yelped
+and disturbed the General's ideas of a proper Review, will prove to be
+at the bottom of the whole matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Tom," interrupted the Captain, "you will have to put your record in
+better shape."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 259 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p><p>"How can I do it?" said the Sutler.</p>
+
+<p>"By sending Pigey a bill for the three dollars you paid to have the
+horse shot."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd boisterously applauded the proposition, and insisted upon its
+execution. Desultory conversation followed until "Taps" dispersed them
+to their quarters.</p>
+
+<p>Grumbling is claimed as a soldier's privilege, and the Sutler's tent
+being a lounging place when off duty, becomes a place of grumbling, much
+like the place of wailing that the Jews have on the outskirts of
+Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight later saw the crowd in their old position, but with
+countenances in which it was difficult to say whether anxiety or anger
+predominated.</p>
+
+<p>"Fellows, it is terminating just as the Adjutant prophesied a short time
+ago in this very place," said a Captain slightly past the prime of life,
+but of vigorous build. "In trying to keep the men out of dress coats,
+the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel have got themselves into all manner
+of trouble, and there is no let-up with old Pigey. I saw them this
+morning both as cheerful as crickets, and determined to have the matter
+thoroughly investigated."</p>
+
+<p>"Did they intimate any opinion as to what we ought to do?" inquired the
+Adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word. In that respect they say just as they did before they were
+placed in close confinement, that it is a case in which each man must
+act for himself. They are willing to shoulder the responsibility of
+their own acts, and were very indignant when they heard that Pigey had
+ordered the other Brigade under arms, and two pieces of artillery to be
+trained upon our camp, as if the whole Regiment was guilty of mutiny,
+when there was not at <!-- Page 260 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>the same time a more quiet or orderly Regiment in
+camp."</p>
+
+<p>"They understand," remarked the Adjutant, "however, why that was done.
+The General must have something to justify this unusually harsh
+treatment. A charge of simple disobedience of orders would not do it, so
+he charges them with mutiny, and trumps up this apprehension and parade
+to appear consistent. The Lieutenant-Colonel anticipated it, I know. I
+heard him say, while under simple arrest, that he believed that after
+three o'clock they would be placed in close confinement, and on the
+strength of it some letters were sent by a civilian giving full details.
+Well, I am glad that they are in good spirits."</p>
+
+<p>"In the very best," replied the Captain, "although the General starts as
+if he intended giving them a tough through. The Sibley that they were
+turned into late last night, was put up over ground so wet that you
+couldn't make a track upon it without it would fill with water, and the
+Lieutenant-Colonel had to sleep upon this ground with a single blanket,
+as it was late when his servant Charlie came to the guard with his roll
+of blankets, and the General would not permit him to pass. In
+consequence he awoke this morning chilled, wet through, and with a fair
+start for a high fever. And then they are denied writing material,
+books, even a copy of the Regulations. The General relented
+sufficiently, to tell an aid to inform them, that they might correspond
+with their families if they would submit the correspondence first to
+inspection at Division Head-quarters; to which they replied&mdash;that 'the
+General might insult them, but could not compel them to humiliate their
+families.' No one is permitted to <!-- Page 261 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>see them unless by special permission
+of the General."</p>
+
+<p>"And when I saw those three guards to-day pacing about that Sibley,"
+excitedly spoke the Virginia Captain, "I felt like mounting a
+cracker-box in camp and asking the men to follow me, and find out on
+what grounds, this puss-in-boots outraged in this way men more
+well-meaning and determined than himself in the suppression of this
+rebellion. But it will all come right. They are not to be crowded clear
+out of sight in a single day. One of my men told me that he was present
+on duty when that wharf-rat of an Adjutant, that the exhorting Colonel
+is trying to make an Adjutant-General of, came into the General's tent
+with the Lieutenant-Colonel, and he said that the General asked the
+Colonel whether he was still determined to disobey the lawful order of
+his superior officer, the Commanding General of the Division?</p>
+
+<p>"'The legality of the order is what I question,' said the Colonel. 'An
+order to be lawful should at least be reasonable. That order is
+unreasonable, unjust to the men, and I cannot conscientiously obey it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'This money for the coats does not come out of your pocket,' said the
+General, blandly. 'Why need you concern yourself about it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It comes out of the pockets of my men, General,' said the Colonel,
+'and I consider it my duty to concern myself sufficiently to prevent
+imposition upon them.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tut,' said the General. 'You wouldn't hear a Regular officer say
+that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The greater shame for them,' said the Colonel. 'My men are my
+neighbors and friends. They look <!-- Page 262 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>to me to protect their interests. As a
+general thing the Regulars are recruited from the purlieus of great
+cities, and are men of no character.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Colonel,' said the General, sternly, 'listen to this definition of
+'Mutiny,' and then, as you are a lawyer, think of your present
+position.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Colonel heard it read and replied that 'it had nothing whatever to
+do with the case, as there was no mutiny, nor even an approach to it.'
+Considering the time of day, the General, so far, had been unusually
+cool, but he could keep in no longer.</p>
+
+<p>"'Colonel,' said he, in a loud, angry tone, as he advanced towards him,
+'by G&mdash;d, sir, you are mutinous, sir!'</p>
+
+<p>"'General,' replied the Colonel, coolly, and looking him full in the
+eye, 'with all due deference to your superior rank, permit me to say,
+that if you say I am guilty of mutiny you overstep the bounds of truth.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Colonel's confident manner rather staggered the General, and he
+turned to the Adjutant, who has been his runner throughout this matter,
+and called upon him to substantiate his assertion; which he did.</p>
+
+<p>"With the remark that he would not dare to make such false assertions
+away from the General's head-quarters, the Colonel turned upon him
+indignantly, and the General called for the Provost Guard to conduct him
+to the Sibley. Now I tell you, fellows," continued the Captain, "the
+General will make nothing out of this matter."</p>
+
+<p>"He has his malice gratified by the present punishment he is subjecting
+them to, as if fearful that they might come unharmed from a
+Court-martial. But I don't believe that he will be able to <!-- Page 263 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>get the
+Regiment into dress coats," remarked the Adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>The Adjutant was right. The Regiment did not get into dress coats;
+although its Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel slipped into strait-jackets.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 264 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+
+<p><i>Dress Coats versus Blouses&mdash;Military Law&mdash;Bill the
+Cook&mdash;Courts-Martial&mdash;Important Decision in Military Law&mdash;'A Man with
+Two Blouses on' can be compelled to put a Dress Coat on top&mdash;A Colored
+French Cook and a Beefy-browed Judge-Advocate&mdash;The Mud March&mdash;No
+Pigeon-holing on a Whiskey Scent&mdash;Old Joe in Command&mdash;Dissolution of
+Partnership between the Dutch Doctor and Chaplain.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>Necessity knows no law. Military law springs from the necessity of the
+case, and may be said, therefore, to be equivalent to no law. However
+plausible the principles embodied in the compact periods of Benet and De
+Hart may appear, in actual practice they dwindle to little else than the
+will of the officer who details the court. General Officers, tried at
+easy intervals, before pains-taking courts, in large cities, may have
+opportunity for equal and exact justice; but Heaven help their inferiors
+who have their cases put through at lightning speed, before a court
+under marching orders, and expecting momentarily to move.</p>
+
+<p>The Act of Congress, with a wise prescience of the jealousies and
+bickerings always arising between Regulars and Volunteers, provides that
+Regulars shall be tried by Regular, and Volunteers by Volunteer
+Officers. In practice, the spirit of the law is <!-- Page 265 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>evaded by the
+subterfuge, that a Regular Officer, temporarily in command of
+Volunteers, is <i>pro tempore</i> a Volunteer Officer. In the Mexican War,
+where the number of Volunteer Officers was comparatively small, there
+may have been a necessity for this. With our present immense Volunteer
+force there can be none whatever; and the practice is the more
+inexcusable, when we consider the great amount of legal as well as
+military ability among the officers of this force. The gross injustice
+of this violation of the act, must be apparent to any one upon a
+moment's reflection. Officers, whose only offence may be their belonging
+to the Volunteer Service, are too frequently subjected to the tender
+mercy of a Board of Martinets;&mdash;men of long service and tried ability,
+degraded by the fiat of a court composed of officers as tender in
+intellect as in years, and whose only recommendation to be members of
+the court, is their recent transfer from lessons in gunnery and
+drills;&mdash;with patent leather knapsacks, to field or higher positions in
+the Volunteer Service. Thus, the officer whose earnestness in the cause
+and heavy sacrifice of family ties and business affairs, first raised
+the command,&mdash;who grew with its growth during months, perhaps years, of
+hard service,&mdash;saw through his untiring efforts the awkwardness of his
+men change gradually for the precision of the veteran,&mdash;not unfrequently
+by the snap judgment of men whose only service has been in Pay,
+Quarter-Master, Commissary Departments,&mdash;anywhere but in a Fighting
+Department,&mdash;finds himself dishonored, his service thrown aside for
+naught, and his worst enemy the misuse of the laws he had taken arms to
+vindicate.</p>
+
+<p>Not an officer or soldier but must recollect a case in point. Now, this
+mainly arises from the undue <!-- Page 266 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>and unjust deference paid by the War
+Department to Regular Officers, and the curse that attends them and
+upholds them&mdash;Red Tape. <i>Undue and unjust deference.</i> Does not the
+history of the Army of the Potomac prove it? Its heroic fighting, but
+ill-starred generalship!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Halloo, Bill! what news from the Sibley?" shouted one of a group of
+officers who sat and lay upon the ground, cheerfully discussing hard
+tack and coffee in the camp of a grand picket reserve, near the
+Rappahannock. The man addressed would, in build, have made a good
+recruit for the armies of New Amsterdam in their warfare against the
+Swedes, so graphically described by Irving. Short and thickly set, with
+a face radiant as a brass kettle in a preserving season, trousers thrust
+in a pair of cast-away top boots, the legs of which fell in ungainly
+folds about his ankles, a greasy blouse, tucked in at the waist-band,
+and a cap ripped behind in the vain effort to accommodate it to a head
+of Websterian dimensions. With all his shortcomings, and they were
+legion, Bill's education, unfailing humor and kindness of heart made him
+a favorite at regimental Head-quarters, where he had long been employed
+as an attendant. When the sickness of the Lieutenant-Colonel grew
+serious in the Sibley, Bill took his post by the side of his blankets,
+and in well-meaning attention made up what he lacked in tenderness as a
+nurse.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing new since the trial," drawled out Bill, seating himself
+meanwhile, and mopping with his coat sleeve the perspiration that stood
+in beads upon his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Since the trial!" echoed the officer. "Why, they have not had notice
+yet, and the General said <!-- Page 267 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>he would give them ample opportunity for
+preparation for trial."</p>
+
+<p>"So he did," continued Bill. "They were put into the Sibley on Monday
+night, and on Thursday night following, about half-past ten, when it was
+raining in torrents, and storming so that the guards and myself could
+scarcely keep the old tent up, that sucker-mouthed Aid of old Pigey's
+popped his head inside the flaps and handed the Colonel and
+Lieut.-Colonel each a letter. Both letters went on to say, that their
+trial would take place the next day, at ten o'clock, at Pigey's
+Head-quarters, and that each letter contained a copy of the charges and
+specifications, and that, in the meanwhile, they could prepare for
+trial, provide counsel, and so forth. The best part of two sheets of
+large-sized letter paper was filled with the charges against each, all
+in Pigey's hand-writing.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Disrespectful language towards the General Commanding Division;'
+'Conduct tending to Mutiny;' 'Disobedience of Orders;' and
+'Violation of at least half a dozen different articles of war.'</p></div>
+
+<p>"The ink was green yet, as if it had all been done after three o'clock.
+The Lieutenant-Colonel, you know, told that wharf rat of an Adjutant
+before the General, that he would not dare to make such mis-statements
+away from Division Head-quarters. Well, on the strength of that, he had
+him charged with sending a challenge to fight a duel, and telling his
+superior officer that he lied. Lord! when I heard them read, I thought
+they ought to be thankful that one of the darkies about Division
+Head-quarters hadn't died in the meanwhile, or there would have been a
+charge of murder. It might just as well, at any rate, have been murder
+as mutiny, that we all know. Time for trial!&mdash;lots of time! Just <!-- Page 268 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>the
+time to hunt a lawyer, consult law books, and drum up testimony."</p>
+
+<p>"Timed purposely, of course," broke in the officer, indignantly, "and
+the Court, no doubt, packed to suit. But," his face brightening, "there
+is an appeal to Father Abraham."</p>
+
+<p>"It is all very well to talk about Father Abraham," continued Bill, in
+the same drawling tone; "but if you have to hunt up Honest Old Abe
+through the regular military channels, as they say you have to, he'll
+seem about as far off as the first old Father Abraham did to that rich
+old Cockey that had a big dry on in a hot place."</p>
+
+<p>"Bill," said the officer, as he saw the crowd inclined to laugh at the
+remark, "this is by far too serious a matter to jest about. Here are two
+men of character and position, devoted to the cause body and soul,
+completely at the mercy of an officer whose conduct is a reproach to his
+command, and who is malicious alike in deeds and words."</p>
+
+<p>"Especially the latter," interrupted Bill, more hurriedly than before.
+"The Colonel says he was chief witness, and swore the charges right
+straight through, without wincing. The Judge Advocate, they said, was a
+right clever gentlemanly fellow, but ignorant of law, and completely at
+the disposal of the General. I saw him several times when I was passing
+backwards and forwards, and he looked to me as if the beef was a little
+too thick on the outside of his forehead, for the brains to be active
+inside. Still, the Colonels have no fault to find with him, except that
+between times he would talk about drinking to Little Mac, and brag about
+the prospect, as the papers seem to say, of Fitz John Porter's being
+cleared. But then most of the Court did as much at that as <!-- Page 269 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>he did. He
+did his duty in the trial, I guess, as well as his knowledge and old
+Pigey's will would allow."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Bill, give us some particulars of the trials, if you know them,"
+suggested an officer of a neighboring regiment&mdash;the party during the
+conversation being increased by additions of officers and privates.</p>
+
+<p>"I only know what I saw passing back and forth, and what I heard from
+the Colonels themselves. They wouldn't allow any one to go within three
+yards of the tent in which they held Court; but I'll give you what I
+have, although to do it I must go back a little:&mdash;Before it was light on
+the day of trial the Major posted off to our Corps Commander with an
+application for a continuance, on the ground of want of time for
+preparation. About daylight the General came out, rubbing his eyes,
+wanting to know who that early bird was?</p>
+
+<p>"'Playing Orderly, sir,' said he, as his eye lit upon the letter in the
+Major's hand. 'Fine occupation for a man of six feet two, with a Major's
+straps upon his shoulders.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Major wilted till he felt about two feet six, but mustered presence
+of mind sufficient to tell the General his errand, and how his personal
+solicitude had prompted him to perform it himself. The General heard him
+kindly; stated that he had no doubt but that the Court would act
+favorably upon the application, and that it should be referred to them.
+The Court, when it met, acted favorably, so far as to give the Colonel,
+who was tried first, fifteen minutes to hunt a lawyer. But they wouldn't
+let the Lieut.-Colonel act, as he was a party, and several others were
+excluded on the ground of being witnesses, although they took good care
+not to call them. Both <!-- Page 270 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>pleaded guilty to the 'simple disobedience of
+orders,' and the Court was ashamed to try them upon anything besides but
+the 'disrespectful conduct;' in regard to which old Pigey's assertions
+were taken, instead of the circumstances being proved. The Colonel was
+too indignant at the treatment to set up any defence, but the
+Lieutenant-Colonel cross-examined old Pigey until his testimony looked
+like a box of fish-bait. The General swore that he had given him 'the
+lie,' but upon being questioned by the Colonel, stated that 'he did not
+believe the Colonel intended to call his personal veracity into
+question.' In the same manner he had to explain away that duelling
+charge. At last he got so confused that he would ram wood into the stove
+to gain time, bite the ends of his moustache, play with the rim of his
+hat, and when cornered as to the Lieutenant-Colonel's character as an
+officer, to relieve himself, stated;&mdash;that he must say that the Colonel
+had hitherto obeyed every order with cheerfulness, promptitude, great
+zeal and intelligence, and that his intercourse with the Commanding
+General had been marked by great courtesy at all times."</p>
+
+<p>"The Colonel also stated further, that he had testimony to contradict
+that Adjutant, or Wharf-Rat, as you know him best by. He had told me
+before the trial to tell that young law student, Tom, a private of Co.
+C, who heard the conversation that the Adjutant had testified to, to be
+within calling distance during the trial, with his belt on, hair combed,
+and looking as neat as possible. Well, in Tom came, his face and eyes
+swelled up from a bad cold, a stocking that had been a stranger to soap
+and water for one long march at least, tied about his neck to cure a
+sore throat, his belt on properly, but <!-- Page 271 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>his blouse pockets stuffed out
+beyond it with six months' correspondence, and his matted and bleached
+head of hair, through the vain effort to comb it, resembling the heads
+of Feejee Islanders, in Sunday-school books. A smile played around the
+lips of the gentlemanly old Massachusetts Colonel, who presided over the
+Court, as he surveyed him upon entering, and a titter ran around the
+Board, especially among some of the young West-Pointers. The Colonel's
+face colored, and the Judge Advocate's eyes glowed as if he had a soft
+block. But Tom was a singed cat; he always was a slovenly fellow, you
+know, and he turned out to be a file for the viper.</p>
+
+<p>"'Colonel,' said the Judge Advocate haughtily, 'have you any officers
+who are prepared to vouch for the character and credibility of this
+witness, as I see he is but a private?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir, if the Court please,' retorted the Colonel
+indignantly,&mdash;then remembering how this same Judge Advocate had upon
+former occasions affected to despise privates, he added: 'His character
+and credibility are quite as good as those of half the shoulder-strapped
+gentry of the Corps.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Colonel,' said the President, blandly, 'there is an old rule requiring
+privates to be vouched for, rarely insisted upon, at this day, however,'
+casting, as he said this, a half reproachful look upon the Judge
+Advocate; 'but we desire you to understand that your word is as good as
+that of any officer before this Court.'</p>
+
+<p>"The Colonel vouched for him, and Tom was examined, and contradicted
+still further than his own cross-examination had done, the statement of
+the Adjutant, besides snubbing the Judge Advocate handsomely. A string
+of witnesses, from our Brigadier <!-- Page 272 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>down to all the line officers of the
+command, was then offered to prove character, but the Court very
+formally told the Colonel that a superior officer, the Commanding
+General of the Division, had already testified to this, and that this
+rendered the testimony of officers inferior in rank quite superfluous.
+So you see from this and Tom's case, Justice don't go it blind in
+Courts-Martial, but keeps one eye open to see whether the witness has
+shoulder-straps on or not."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Bill," inquired a lawyer in the crowd, "did not the Colonel offer
+to prove that the Regiment was amply supplied with clothing, and that
+the order was unreasonable, and that it was not therefore a lawful
+order, as the law is supposed to be founded upon reason?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, both did; but the Lieutenant-Colonel was told by the
+President, that if General Burnside were to order the President to make
+a requisition in dog-days for old Spartan metal helmets for his
+Regiment, he would make the requisition.</p>
+
+<p>"Said the Colonel, 'the President of the United States is by the
+Regulations empowered to prescribe the uniform.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That,' said the President, 'General Burnside must judge of. I must
+execute the order, however unreasonable it may seem, first, and question
+it afterwards.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Suppose the General would order you to black his boots; or,' said the
+Colonel, thinking that a little too strongly put; 'suppose that you were
+second in command of a battery lying near a peaceful and loyal town, and
+your superior, drunk or otherwise, would order you to shell it, would
+you obey the order, and question it after having murdered half <!-- Page 273 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>the
+women and children of the place?' To which questions, however, the Court
+gave the go-by, remarking simply, that they did not suppose that the
+Colonel had any criminal intentions in disobeying the order. So, really,
+it is narrowed down to the disobedience of, to say the least, a most
+uncalled for order."</p>
+
+<p>"And faithful, well intentioned officers are, for what is at most but an
+honest blunder, treated like felons," said one.</p>
+
+<p>"From their lively and confident manner," said Bill, "I believe that
+they have assurances from Washington that all will be right. There is no
+telling how long the Lieutenant-Colonel will last under this
+confinement, however. He has failed greatly, and although so weak as to
+be unable to walk alone, the General insists upon the guards being upon
+either side whenever he has occasion to leave the tent. Even the sinks
+were dug at over one hundred yards distance from the Sibley. And the
+tent itself is located in such a manner that old Pigey can at all times
+have his vengeance gratified by a full view of it, the three guards
+about it, and my assisting the Lieutenant-Colonel from time to time. But
+the guards esteem, and we all esteem the officers inside the Sibley more
+than the General, who abuses his power in his marquee. Letters and
+newspapers come crawling under the canvas. Roast partridges, squirrels,
+apples, and delicacies that officers and men deny themselves of, find
+their way inside, and while my name is Bill Gladdon they shan't suffer
+through any lack upon my part, and I know that this is the opinion of
+all of us."</p>
+
+<p>"You all recollect the Sibley," said a Lieutenant, "that stands in the
+rear of old Pigey's marquee, in <!-- Page 274 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>which he gave the collation after the
+last corps review, and welcomed our officers as he steadied himself at
+the table, with 'Here comes my gallant 210th.' The Court met in that."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," resumed Bill, "the same. It stands near his cook tent, and while
+his darkies were serving up French cookery, the Judge Advocate did the
+work allotted him in endeavoring to justify by the trial, in some slight
+manner, the General's outrageous conduct. I heard that Tom said, that
+after the Judge Advocate had asked that he be vouched for, and the
+Colonel became indignant, the Judge Advocate said somewhat blandly,</p>
+
+<p>"'You must remember, Colonel, that this is not one of your ordinary
+Courts of Justice.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That it is not a Court of Justice,' retorted the Colonel, 'is very
+apparent.'</p>
+
+<p>"Both were put through in a hurry, at any rate. The different members of
+the Court said that they all had marching orders, and they had no sooner
+left the Sibley than they were upon horseback and on the gallop towards
+their different commands. Our Doctor had detailed an ambulance to take
+the Colonels in the rear of the Division. Old Pigey, in his usual
+morning survey of the premises, saw it in front of the Sibley, and sent
+an Orderly to take the rather lively, good-looking bays that were in it
+and exchange them for the old rips that haul the ambulance his cooks
+ride in. But we did not move then, although they say we will certainly
+to-morrow."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That inevitable "they say," the common prefix to rumors in camp as well
+as civil life, had given Bill correct information. For next morning, in
+spite of the lowering sky, the camps were all astir with busy <!-- Page 275 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>life, and
+during the course of the forenoon column after column trudged along over
+the already soft roads in a south-westerly direction. The movement was
+the mad desperation of a Commander of undaunted energy. A vain effort to
+appease that most capricious of masters, popular clamor. The rains
+descended, and that grand army of the Potomac literally floundered in
+the mud.</p>
+
+<p>In an old field, thickly grown with young pines, very near the farthest
+point reached in the march, our Regiment rested towards the close of the
+last day of the advance, or to speak more truly, attempted advance.
+Fatigued with the double duty of struggling with the mud and corduroying
+the roads, the repose was heartily welcome.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"It does a fellow good to feel a little frisky,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sang, or rather shouted, a little Corporal, whom we have met before in
+these pages, as he made ridiculous efforts to infuse life into heels
+clodded with mud.</p>
+
+<p>"Talk as you please about old Pigey, boys, he's a regular trump on the
+whiskey question. He'll cut red-tape any day on that. Don't you see the
+boys?" continued the Corporal, addressing a crowd reposing at full
+length upon the freshly cut pine boughs, conspicuous among whom was the
+Adjutant;&mdash;pointing as he spoke to several men in uniform, but boys in
+years, who were being forced and dragged along by successive groups of
+their comrades.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't stand the Commissary&mdash;stomachs too tender. Ha! ha! Pigey and
+myself are in on that."</p>
+
+<p>"What is up now, Corporal?" queried the Adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing is up; it's all down," retorted the Corporal, <!-- Page 276 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>in a half
+serious air, as he saluted the Colonel respectfully. "You see, Adjutant,
+they are bits of boys at any rate, just from school, and the Commissary
+was too much for their empty stomachs. I was sent back to hurry up the
+stragglers, and while we were catching up as rapidly as possible, old
+Pigey came ploughing up the mud alongside of us, followed by that
+sucker-mouthed Aid. I saw at once that Division Head-quarters had a good
+load on. With a patronizing grin, said the General stopping short
+alongside of a wagon belonging to another corps, and that was fast
+almost up to the wagon-bed, while the mules were fairly floating,
+'What's in that wagon?' and without waiting for answer, 'whiskey, by
+G&mdash;d,' he broke out, snuffing at the same time towards the wagon. 'Boys,
+unload a couple of barrels,' he continued, good-humoredly, as if trying
+to make up for the outrage he has just committed upon the Regiment. The
+driver protested, and the wagon guards said that it could not be taken
+without an order; but it was after three, and old Pigey ripped and swore
+that his order was as good as anybody's, and the guards were frightened
+enough to let our boys roll out two barrels. No pigeon-holing on a
+whiskey scent! One barrel he ordered up to his head-quarters, and the
+head of the other was knocked in, and he told us to drink our fill, and
+at it the boys went. Tin cups, canteens, cap-covers, anything that would
+hold the article, were made use of, and they are a blue old crowd, from
+the General down. The boys had had nothing but a few hard tack during
+the day, and it was about the first drink to some, and from the way it
+tastes it must have been made out of rotten corn and not two months old,
+and altogether straggling increased considerably."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 277 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>"Straggling! why they are wallowing like hogs in the mud, Adjutant! It
+is a shame, and if some one of my superiors will not prefer charges
+against the General and his Adjutant, I will. Men of mine are drunk that
+I never knew to taste a drop before," indignantly exclaimed the Western
+Virginia Captain, as, with hat off, face aglow with perspiration, eyes
+flashing, and boots that indicated service in taking the soundings of
+the mud on the march, he came panting up with rapid strides. "Now, sir,
+fourteen of my best men are drunk&mdash;the first drunken man I have had
+during the campaign&mdash;and I'll be shot to death with musketry, sooner
+than punish a single man of them."</p>
+
+<p>"But discipline must be kept up," said the Adjutant.</p>
+
+<p>"Discipline! do you say, Adjutant?" retorted the Captain. "If you want
+to see discipline go to Division Head-quarters. Why old Pigey is
+prancing around like a steed at a muster,&mdash;crazy! absolutely crazy! His
+cocked hat is more crooked than ever, and the knot of his muffler is at
+the back of his neck, and the ends flying like wings. Just a few minutes
+ago he stopped suddenly while on a canter, right by one of my men, lying
+along the road-side, that he had made drunk, and chuckled and laughed,
+and lolled from side to side in his saddle, and then at a canter again
+rode to another one and went through the same performance. And his
+Adjutant-General&mdash;why one of my men not ten minutes ago led his horse to
+Head-quarters. He was so drunk, actually, that his eyes looked like
+those of a shad out of water a day,&mdash;his feet out of the stirrups, the
+reins loose about his horse's neck, his hands hanging listlessly down,
+and the liquor oozing out <!-- Page 278 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>of the corners of his sucker mouth. And there
+he was, his horse carrying him about at random among the stumps, and
+officers and men laughing at him, expecting to see him go over on the
+one side or the other every moment. Now, it is a burning shame. And I,
+for one, will expose them, if it takes the hide off. Here are our
+Colonels confined just for no offence at all,&mdash;for doing their duty, in
+fact,&mdash;and this man, after having Court-martialed all that he could of
+his command, trying to demoralize the rest by whiskey. Now, sir, the
+higher the rank the more severe the punishment should be. Just before we
+started Burney had an order read that we were about to meet the enemy,
+and that every man must do his duty. And here is a General of Division,
+in command of nine thousand men, as drunk as a fool."</p>
+
+<p>"Let Pigey alone on the whiskey question, Captain," interrupted the
+Corporal, who had in the meantime been refreshing his inner man by a
+pull at his canteen. "He's a regular trump&mdash;yes," slapping his canteen
+as he spoke, "a full hand of trumps any time on that topic. Like other
+men, he drinks to drown his grief at our poor prospect of a fight."</p>
+
+<p>"A fine condition he is in to lead men into a fight;&mdash;but not much worse
+than at Fredericksburg," slowly observed the Preacher Lieutenant, who,
+as one of the crowd, had been a listener to the story of the Captain.
+"Drunkenness has cursed our army too much. But we cannot consistently be
+silent in sight of conduct like this on the part of Commanders. The
+interests of our men"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Have a care, Lieutenant," quietly observed the Adjutant, "how you talk.
+'The interests of the men' have placed our Colonels under guard in the
+Sibley."</p>
+
+<p>"Not bolts, nor bars a prison make," resumed <!-- Page 279 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>the Preacher more
+spiritedly, "and I would sooner have a quiet conscience in confinement,
+than the reproach of disgraceful conduct and command a Division."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Corduroying the entire route had not been proposed, when the army
+commenced its movement; but it became apparent to all that progress was
+only tolerable with it, and without it, impossible. On the day after the
+above conversation, the army commenced to retrace its steps. Some days,
+however, intervened before the smoke ascended from their old huts, and
+the men in lazy circles about the camp fires rehashed their
+recollections of the "mud march."</p>
+
+<p>Like our repulse at Fredericksburg, it was, as far as our
+Commander-in-Chief was concerned, a misfortune and not a fault. A change
+in command was evident, however, and the substitution of the
+whole-hearted, dashing Hooker for the equally earnest but more steady
+Burnside, that took place in the latter part of January, occasioned no
+surprise in the army. The new Commander went much farther, than old
+attachments had probably permitted his predecessor in going, in removing
+McClellanism. Grand Divisions were abolished; rigid inquiries into the
+comforts and conveniences of the men were frequent, and senseless
+reviews less frequent. Bakeries were established in every Brigade, and
+fresh bread and hot rolls furnished in wholesome abundance, to the great
+benefit of the Government, for hospital rolls were thereby depleted, and
+reports for duty increased. Rigid discipline and daily drills too were
+kept up, as "Old Joe" was a frequent visitor, when least expected. His
+constant solicitude for the welfare of the men, manifested <!-- Page 280 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>by close
+personal attention, which the men themselves were witness to, rather
+than by concocted newspaper reports, by which the friends of the soldier
+in their loyal homes might be imposed upon, and the soldier himself not
+benefited, endeared him to his entire command.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One clear, cold morning, during these palmy days of the army, the men of
+the regiment nearest the Surgeon's Quarters were greatly surprised by
+the sudden exit of a small-sized sheet iron stove from the tent occupied
+by the Surgeon and Chaplain, closely followed up by the little Dutch
+Doctor in his shirt sleeves, sputtering hurriedly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Tam schmoke pox!" and at every ejaculation bestowing a vigorous kick.
+At a reasonably safe distance in his rear was the Chaplain, in half
+undress also, remonstrating as coolly as possible,&mdash;considering that the
+stove was his property. The Doctor did not refrain, however, until its
+badly battered fragments lay at intervals upon the ground.</p>
+
+<p>"Efry morn, and efry morn, schmoke shust as the Tuyfel. I no need
+prepare for next world py that tam shmoke pox. Eh?" continued the
+Doctor, facing the Chaplain.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Doctor," said the Chaplain, soothingly, "we ought to get along
+better than this in our department."</p>
+
+<p>"Shaplain's department! Eh! By G&mdash;t! One Horse-Doctor and one Shaplain
+enough for a whole Division!"</p>
+
+<p>The sudden appearance of Bill, the attendant upon the Colonels in the
+Sibley, at the Adjutant's quarters, had the effect of transferring
+hither the crowd, who were enjoying what proved to be a <!-- Page 281 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>final
+dissolution of partnership between the Chaplain and the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"I know your errand, Bill," remarked the Adjutant, looking him full in
+the face. "An orderly has just handed me the General Order. But what is
+to become of the Lieutenant-Colonel?"</p>
+
+<p>"You only have the order dismissing the Colonel, then. There was a
+message sent about ten o'clock last night, a little after the General
+Order was received at the Sibley, stating that at day-break this morning
+the Colonel should be escorted to Aquia under guard, and that before
+leaving he should have no intercourse whatever with any of his command.
+Old Pigey also tried further to add insult to injury, by stating that
+the Lieutenant-Colonel, who cannot, from weakness, walk twenty steps,
+even though it would save his life, would be released from close
+confinement, and might have the benefit of Brigade limits in our new
+camp ground for exercise. You know that is so full of stumps and
+undergrowth that a well man can hardly get along in it."</p>
+
+<p>"So an officer of the Colonel's merit and services," remarked the
+Adjutant, "was dragged off before daylight, and disgraced for what was
+in its very worst light but a simple blunder, made under the most
+extenuating of circumstances. Boys, if there be faith in Stanton's
+pledged word, matters will be set right as soon as the record of the
+case reaches the War Department. I am informed that he denounced the
+whole proceeding as an outrage, and telegraphed the General; and we all
+know that the General has been spending a good portion of the time since
+the trial in Washington."</p>
+
+<p>"And he came back," observed Bill, "yesterday morning, in a mood unusual
+with him before three <!-- Page 282 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>o'clock in the afternoon. He had his whole staff,
+all his orderlies and the Provost Guard out to stop a Maine Regiment
+from walking by the side of the road, when the mud was over shoe top in
+the road itself,&mdash;and he flourished that thin sword of his, and raved
+and swore and danced about until one of the Maine boys wanted to know
+who 'that little old Cockey was with a ramrod in his hand,&mdash;' and that
+set the laugh so much against him that his Aids returned their pistols
+and he his sword, and he sneaked back to his marquee, and issued an
+order requiring his whole command to stand at arms along the road side
+upon the approach of troops from either direction."</p>
+
+<p>"Which," remarked the Adjutant, "if obeyed, would keep them under arms
+well nigh all the time, and would provoke a collision, as it would be an
+insult to the troops of other commands, to whom the road should be
+equally free. But it is a fair sample of the judgment of Pigey."</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 283 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Presentation Mania&mdash;The Western Virginia Captain in the War
+Department&mdash;Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton&mdash;Capture of the Dutch
+Doctor&mdash;A Genuine Newspaper Sell.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>Presentations by men to officers should be prevented by positive orders;
+not that the recipients are not usually meritorious, but the practice by
+its prevalency is an unjust tax upon a class little able to bear it. A
+costly sword must be presented to our Captain,&mdash;intimates a man perhaps
+warmly in the Captain's confidence. Forthwith the list is started, and
+with extra guard and fatigue duty before the eyes of the men, it makes a
+unanimous circuit of the command. Active newspaper reporters, from the
+sheer merit of the officer, may be, and may be from the additional
+inducement of a little compensation, give an account of the presentation
+in one of the dailies that fills the breasts of the officer's friends
+with pride, while the decreased remittance of the private may keep back
+some creature comfort from his wife and little ones. Statistics showing
+how far these presentations are spontaneous offerings, and to what
+extent results of wire-working at Head-quarters, would prove more
+curious than creditable.</p>
+
+<p>Our Brigade did not escape the Presentation <!-- Page 284 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>Mania. Never did it develop
+itself in a command, however, more spontaneously. The plain, practical
+sense of our Brigadier was the more noticeable to the men, on account of
+its marked contrast to the quibbles and conceit of the General of
+Division. The officers and men of the Brigade had with great care and
+cost selected a noble horse of celebrated stock upon which to mount
+their Brigadier, and, on a pleasant evening in March, a crowd informally
+assembled was busied in arranging for the morrow the programme of
+presentation. The General of Division, so far in the cold in the matter,
+was just then making himself sensibly felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel," said an officer, who from the direction of Brigade
+Head-quarters neared the crowd, addressing a central figure, "you might
+as well take the General's horse out to grass awhile."</p>
+
+<p>"Explain yourself," say several.</p>
+
+<p>"Pigey has his foot in the whole matter nicely. The General, you know,
+just returned this evening from sick leave. Well, he and his friends,
+who came with him to see the presentation ceremonies, had not been at
+Head-quarters an hour before that sucker-mouthed Aid made his
+appearance, and said that he was directed by the General Commanding the
+Division to place him under arrest. The fellow was drunk, and the
+General hardly deigned to notice him. As he staggered away, he muttered
+that there were fifteen charges against him, and that he would find the
+General's grip a tight one."</p>
+
+<p>Amid exclamations, indicating that the perplexity of the matter could
+not prevent a sly smile at the ludicrous position in which the Brigadier
+and his friends from abroad were placed, the officer continued&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 285 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p><p>"But the General brings good news from Washington. The Colonel and
+Lieutenant-Colonel of the 210th return at an early day."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, that is so," broke in our Western Virginia Captain, who had
+just returned from enjoying one of the furloughs at that time so freely
+distributed. "At last the War Department, or rather Mr. Secretary
+Stanton, for all the balance of the department, as far as I could learn,
+thought the delay outrageous, fulfils its promise. After the
+Lieutenant-Colonel had been at home on a sick leave for some time, and
+we all thought the matter about dropped; what should I see one day but
+his name, with thirty-two others, in a daily, under the head of
+'Dismissals from the Army.' There it was, dismissed for doing his duty,
+and published right among the names of scoundrels who had skulked five
+times from the battle-field; men charged with drunkenness, and every
+offence known to the Military Decalogue. My furlough had just come, and
+I started for Washington by the next boat, bound to see how the matter
+stood. The morning after I got there, I posted up bright and early to
+the War Department, but a sergeant near the door, with more polish on
+his boots than in his manners, told me that I had better keep shady
+until ten o'clock, as business hours commenced then. I sat down on a
+pile of old lumber near by, and passed very nearly three hours in
+wondering why so many broad-shouldered fellows, who could make a sabre
+fall as heavy as the blow of a broad-axe, were lounging about or going
+backward and forward upon errands that sickly boys might do as well. As
+it grew nearer ten, able-bodied, bright-looking officers, Regulars, as I
+was told, educated at Uncle Sam's <!-- Page 286 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>expense to fight, elegantly
+shoulder-strapped, passed in to drive quills in a quiet department,
+'remote from death's alarms,' and I wondered if some spirited clerks and
+schoolmasters that I knew, who would have been willing to have gone bent
+double under knapsacks, if the Surgeon would have accepted them, would
+not have performed the duty better, and have permitted the country to
+have the benefit of the military education of these gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>"I see, Captain, that you don't understand it," interrupted an officer.
+"Our Regular Officers are not all alike patriotic up to the fighting
+point; and it is a charitable provision that permits one, say,&mdash;who is
+married to a plantation of niggers, or who has other Southern sympathies
+or affinities, or who may have conscientious scruples about fighting
+against our 'Southern brethren,'&mdash;to take a snug salary in some peaceful
+department, or to go on recruiting service in quiet towns, where
+grasshoppers can be heard singing for squares, and where he is under the
+necessity of killing nothing but time, and wounding nothing but his
+country's honor and his own, if a man of that description can be said to
+possess any. In their offices, these half-hearted Lieutenants, Captains,
+and Colonels, are like satraps in their halls, unapproachable, except by
+passing bayonets that should be turned towards Richmond."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if I don't understand it," resumed the Captain, "it is high time
+that Uncle Sam understood it. If these men are half-hearted, they will
+write no better than they fight, and I guess if the truth could be got
+at, they are responsible for most of the clogging in the Commissary and
+Quarter-Master Departments. But you've got me off my story. At ten
+o'clock I staved in, just as I was, <!-- Page 287 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>my uniform shabby, and my boots
+with a tolerably fair representation of Aquia mud upon them. Passing
+from one orderly to another, I brought up at the Adjutant-General's
+office, and there I was referred to the head clerk's office, and there a
+pleasant-looking, gentlemanly Major told me that the matter would be
+certainly set straight as soon as the court-martial records were
+forwarded; that they had telegraphed for them again and again; and that
+at one time they were reported lost, and at another carried off by one
+of General Burnside's Staff Officers. As I had heard of records of the
+kind being delayed before, I intimated rather plainly what I thought of
+the matter, and told him that I wanted to see the Secretary himself. He
+smiled, and told me to take my place in the rear of an odd-looking mixed
+assemblage of persons in the hall, who were crowding towards an open
+door. It was after two o'clock and after I had stood until I felt
+devotional about the knees, when my turn brought me before the door, and
+showed me Mr. Secretary himself, standing behind a desk, tossing his
+head, now on this side and now on that, with quick jerks, like a
+short-horned bull in fly time, despatching business and the hopes of the
+parties who had it from their looks, about the same time. Right manfully
+did he stand up to his work; better than to his word perhaps, if reports
+that I have heard be true."</p>
+
+<p>"A pretty-faced, middle-aged lady approached his desk, and I thought
+that I could see a rather awkward effort at a smile hang around the
+upper corners of his huge, black beard, as his eye caught her features
+through his spectacles, and he received her papers. But the gruff manner
+in which he told her <!-- Page 288 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>the next moment that he would not grant it, showed
+I was mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>"'But I was told, Mr. Secretary,' said the woman, in tremulous tones,
+'that my papers were all right, and that your assent was a mere
+formality. I have three other sons in the service, and this boy is
+not'&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't care what you have been told,' retorted the Secretary, in a
+manner that made me so far forget my reverence that my toes suddenly
+felt as if disposed to propel something that, strange to say, had the
+semblance of humanity, and was not distant at the time. 'You had better
+leave the room, madam!' continued the same voice, somewhat gruffer and
+sterner, as the poor woman burst into tears at the sudden
+disappointment. 'You only interrupt and annoy. We are accustomed to this
+sort of thing here.'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at him as he took the papers of another for examination, and
+wondered whether we were really American citizens&mdash;sovereigns as our
+politicians tell us when on the stump, and whether he was really a
+public servant. But I couldn't see it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, civility is a cheap commodity, and, in my humble opinion, the
+least that can be expected of men filling public positions is that they
+should possess it in an ordinary degree.</p>
+
+<p>"Three o'clock came, but it was not my turn yet. In fact, the treatment
+of the lady had so disgusted me, that I was quite ready to leave when a
+servant announced that business hours were over. That evening, I found
+out to my great satisfaction that men considerably more influential than
+myself had held the Secretary to the promises he had made them, and that
+notwithstanding all his backing and filling the order for their return
+would be issued."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 289 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p><p>The disappointment of the morrow was a standing topic in camp and on the
+picket line for the ensuing three weeks. The only doubt that existed
+with the Court convened for the trial of the Brigadier appeared to be
+whether the numerous charges excelled most in frivolity or malice, as a
+slight reprimand for writing an unofficial account of an engagement,&mdash;an
+offence of which several members of the Court had, by their own
+confession, repeatedly been guilty,&mdash;was the sole result of its labor.
+His restoration to command, the presentation, and the return of the
+Colonels followed in rapid succession amid the rejoicings of officers
+and men.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;Amid the waste of meadow and woodland that characterized the face of
+that country, the houses of the farmers, or rather, to use the
+grandiloquent language of the inhabitants, "the mansions of the
+planters," were objects of peculiar interest. In their quaint appearance
+and general air of dilapidation, they stood as relics of the
+civilization of another age. Centuries, seemingly, of important events
+in the law of progress are crowded into years of our campaigning. The
+social status of a large country semi-civilized&mdash;whether you regard the
+intelligence of its people or the condition of its society&mdash;is being
+suddenly altered. The war accomplishes what well-designing men lacked
+nerve and ability to execute&mdash;emancipation. The blessings of a purer
+civilization will follow as naturally as sunshine follows storm.</p>
+
+<p>And yet here and there these old buildings would be varied by one
+evidently framed upon a Yankee model. Such was what was widely known in
+the army as "the Moncure House." On a commanding site at the edge of a
+meadow several miles in length, <!-- Page 290 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>and that seemed from the abrupt bluffs
+that bordered it to have been once the bottom of a lake, this two-story
+weather-board frame was readily discernible. Its location made it a
+prominent point, too, upon the picket line, and it was favored above its
+fellows by daily and nightly occupancy by officers of the command. At
+this period the Regiment almost lived upon the picket line. An old
+wench, with several chalky complexioned children, whose paternal
+ancestor was understood to be under a musket of English manufacture
+perhaps, somewhere on the south side of the Rappahannock, occupied the
+kitchen of the premises. She was unceasing in reminding her military
+co-lodgers that the room used by them as head-quarters,&mdash;from the window
+of which you could take in at a glance the fine expanse of valley,
+threaded by a sparkling tributary of the Potomac,&mdash;was massa's study,
+and that massa was a preacher and had written a "right smart" lot of
+sermons in that very place. In the eyes of Dinah the room was invested
+with a peculiar sanctity. Not so with its present occupants, who could
+not learn that the minister, who was a large slaveholder, had remembered
+"those in bonds as bound with them," and who were quite content that
+artillery proclaiming "liberty throughout the land" in tones of thunder
+had driven away this vender of the divinity of the institution of
+slavery.</p>
+
+<p>In this room, on seats rudely improvised, for its proper furniture had
+long since disappeared, some officers not on duty were passing a
+pleasant April afternoon, when their reveries of other days and rehashes
+of old camp yarns were interrupted by the sudden advent of an officer
+who a week previously had been detailed in charge of a number of men to
+form <!-- Page 291 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>part of an outer picket station some distance up the river. His
+face indicated news, and he was at once the centre of attraction.</p>
+
+<p>"Colonel!" exclaimed he, without waiting to be questioned, "two of our
+best men have been taken prisoners, and the little Dutch Doctor&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened to him?" from several at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Was taken prisoner and released, but had his horse stolen."</p>
+
+<p>His hearers breathed freer when they heard of the personal safety of the
+Doctor, and the officer continued&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And the loss of our men and his horse has all happened through the
+carelessness,&mdash;to treat it mildly,&mdash;of the exhorting Colonel. He is in
+command of the station, and yesterday afternoon the Doctor was on duty
+at his head-quarters. In came one of the black-eyed beauties that live
+in a house near the ford, about half a mile from the station, boo-hooing
+at a terrible rate&mdash;that the youngest rebel of her family was dying with
+the croup&mdash;and that no doctor was near&mdash;and all that old story. The
+Colonel was fool enough to order the Doctor to mount his horse and go
+with the woman. Well, the Doctor had got near the house, when out sprang
+two Mississippi Riflemen from the pines on either side of the road and
+levelled their pieces at him. The Doctor had to dismount, and they sent
+him back on foot. Luckily the Colonel, who, as black Charley says, has
+been praying for a star for some time past, had borrowed the Doctor's
+dress sword on the pretence that it was lighter to carry, but on the
+ground, really, that it looked more Brigadier-like, or he would have
+lost that too. I was on duty down by the river hardly two hours after it
+happened, and as <!-- Page 292 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>there is no firing now along the picket line the
+soldiers were free-and-easy on both sides. All at once I heard laughter
+on the other side, and looking over, I saw a short, thick-set Grey-back
+riding the stolen horse near the water's edge. Presently two other
+Grey-backs sprang on either side of the horse's head, and with pieces
+levelled, in tones loud enough for us to hear, demanded his surrender.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, shentlemen Rebels, mein Gott, you no take non compatants, me
+surgeon,' said the Grey-back on the horse, in equally loud voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, d&mdash;n you! Dismount! We don't want you. You can be of more service
+to the Confederate cause where you are. But we must have the nag.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mine private property,' he replied, as he dismounted.</p>
+
+<p>"'In a horn,' said one of the Grey-backs, pointing to the U. S. on the
+shoulder of the beast. 'That your private mark, eh?'</p>
+
+<p>"'You no shentlemen. By G&mdash;t, no honor,' retorted the Grey-back who
+personated the Doctor, as he swelled himself and strutted about on the
+sand in such a high style of indignation as to draw roars of laughter
+from both sides of the river.</p>
+
+<p>"That rather paid us with interest for the way we sold them the day
+before. You know they have been crazy after our dailies ever since the
+strict general order preventing the exchange of the daily papers between
+pickets. Well, that dare-devil of a law student, Tom, determined to have
+some fun with them. So when they again, as they often had before, came
+to the river with hands full of Richmond papers, proposing exchange, Tom
+flourished a paper also. That was the old signal, and forthwith <!-- Page 293 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>a
+raw-boned Alabamian stripped and commenced wading toward a rock that
+jutted up in the middle of the river. Tom stripped also, and met him at
+the rock. Mum was the word between them, and each turned for his own
+shore, the Grey-back with Tom's paper, and Tom with several of the
+latest Richmond prints. A crowd of Rebel officers met their messenger at
+the water's edge and received the paper. The one who opened it, bent
+nearly double with laughter, and the rest rapidly followed as their eyes
+lit on the stars and stripes printed in glowing colors on the first page
+of the little religious paper that our Chaplains distribute so freely in
+camp, called 'The Christian Banner.' One old officer, apparently of
+higher rank than the rest, cursed it as he went up the bank as a 'd&mdash;&mdash;d
+Yankee sell,&mdash;' which did not in the least lessen our enjoyment of Tom's
+success.</p>
+
+<p>"But with our two men and the Doctor's horse they have squared accounts
+with us since, and all through the fault of the Colonel."</p>
+
+<p>In response to inquiries as to how, when, and where, the officer
+continued&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There was a narrow strip of open land between a belt of woods and the
+river. The Colonel posted our two men on the inside of the woods, where
+they had no open view towards the enemy at all. That rainy night this
+week the Rebs came over in boats and gobbled them up. The Colonel
+attributed their loss to their own neglect, and next morning their place
+was supplied by four old soldiers, as he called them, from his own
+Regiment. That same day at noon, in broad daylight, they were taken."</p>
+
+<p>"And if he were not a firm friend at Division Head-quarters there would
+be a dismissal from <!-- Page 294 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>the service for cause," said an officer of the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Our Corps Commander is too much of a soldier to let it go by," resumed
+the officer, "if our Brigadier can force it through Division
+Head-quarters, and bring it to his notice."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The order that introduced into the service the novelty of carrying eight
+days' rations on a march, had been discussed for some time in the
+Regiment. That night the Regiment was withdrawn from the picket line,
+and preparations were forthwith made for a practical illustration of the
+order on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 295 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Army again on the Move&mdash;Pack Mules and Wagon Trains&mdash;A Negro
+Prophetess&mdash;The Wilderness&mdash;Hooped Skirts and Black Jack&mdash;The Five Days'
+Fight at Chancellorsville&mdash;Terrible Death of an Aged Slave&mdash;A
+Pigeon-hole General's "Power in Reserve."</i></p>
+
+
+<p>It was some weeks after a Rebel Picket, opposite Falmouth, had surprised
+one of our own, who had not as yet heard of the change in the usual
+three days' provender for a march, by asking him across the river
+"whether his eight days' rations were mouldy yet?" that the army
+actually commenced its movement. While awaiting the word to fall in,
+this mass of humanity literally loaded with army bread and ammunition
+resembled, save in uniformity, those unfortunate beings burdened with
+bundles of woe, so strikingly portrayed in the Vision of Mirza. To the
+credit of the men, it must be stated, however, that the greatest
+good-humor prevailed in this effort to render the army self-sustaining
+in a country that could not sustain itself.</p>
+
+<p>Another novel feature in the movement was the long strings of pack
+mules, heavily freighted with ammunition, which were led in the rear of
+the different Brigades. Wagon trains were thereby dispensed with, and
+the mobility of the army greatly increased. <!-- Page 296 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>Stringent orders were
+issued also as to the reduction of baggage, and dispensing with camp
+equipage and cooking utensils.</p>
+
+<p>In lively ranks, although each man was freighted with the prescribed
+eight days' provender and sixty rounds of ball cartridge, our Division,
+of almost 9,000 men, moved, followed by two ambulances to pick up those
+who might fall by the way, in the rear of which were five additional
+ambulances for the especial use of Division Head-quarters. For a General
+of whom reporters had said that "he was most at home in the field," the
+supply of ambulances, full of creature comforts, was unusually heavy. On
+we moved over the familiar ground of the Warrenton Pike, in common with
+several other Army Corps in a grand march; our Division, with its two
+ambulances; our General with his five,&mdash;and our proportionate number of
+pack horses and mules. The obstinacy of the latter animal was sorely
+punished by the apparent effort during that march to teach it perpetual
+motion. Halt the Division did statedly, but there was no rest for the
+poor mule. Experience had taught its driver that the beast would take
+advantage of the halt to lie down, and when once down no amount of
+tugging and swearing and clubbing could induce it to rise. Hence, while
+the command would enjoy their stated halts by the wayside, these strings
+of mules would be led or driven in continuous circles of steady toil.
+Despite the vigilance of their drivers, a mule would occasionally drop,
+and his companions speedily follow, to stand a siege of kicks, cuffs,
+and bayonet pricks, and to be reduced, or what would be more appropriate
+in their case, raised at length by the application of a mud plaster to
+the nostrils, which would bring <!-- Page 297 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>the beast up in an effort to breathe
+freely; from which may arise the slang phrase of "bringing it up a
+snorting."</p>
+
+<p>Onward they marched, those wearers of the cross, the square, the circle,
+the crescent, the star, the lozenge, and the tripod; emblemed
+representatives of the interests of a common humanity in the triumphal
+march that the world is witness to, of the progress of Universal
+Emancipation. Landed aristocracies of the Old World may avow their
+affinity to the aristocracy of human flesh and blood that has so long
+cursed the New; but now that the suicidal hand of the latter has caused
+the forfeit of its existence, we are the centre of the hopes, fears, and
+prayers of the universal brotherhood of man in the effort to blot out
+for ever the only foul spot upon our national escutcheon.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"De Lor bress ye. I know yez all. Yez, Uncle Samuel's children. Long
+looked for come at las," said an old wench on the second day of our
+march, enthusiastically to the advanced ranks of our Division, as they
+wound around the hill in sight of Mt. Holly Church, on the main road to
+Kelly's Ford, curtesying and gesturing all the while with her right
+hand, as if offering welcome, while with her left she steadied on her
+head the cast-away cover of a Dutch oven. A pair of half-worn army shoes
+covered her feet, and the folds of her tow gown were compressed about
+the waist, beneath a black leathern belt, the brass plate of which
+bearing the letters "U. S.," wore a conspicuous polish.</p>
+
+<p>"Massa over yonder," continued she, in response to a query from the
+ranks, pointing as she spoke across the river. "Hope you cotch him.
+Golly he'um slyer than a possum in a hen-roost."</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 298 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p><p>The anxiety of the wench for the capture of her master, and her
+statement of a pre-knowledge of the visit of the troops, were by no
+means exceptional. Rarely indeed, in the history of the Rebellion, has
+devotion on the part of the slave to the interest of the master been
+discovered. The vaunted fealty that would make his cause their own,
+lacks practical illustration. An attempt to arm them will save recruits
+and arms to Uncle Sam. Nat Turner's insurrection developed their strong
+faith in a day of freedom. Their wildest dreams of fancy could not have
+pictured a more auspicious prelude to the realization of that faith than
+the outbreak of the Rebellion. Well might</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Massa tink it day ob doom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">But we ob Jubilee."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The face of the country at this point was adorned by the most beautiful
+variety of hill and dale. Compared with the region about Aquia, it had
+been but little touched by the ravages of war. When it shall have been
+wholly reclaimed under a banner, then to be emphatically "the Banner of
+the Free," an inviting door will open to enterprising business.</p>
+
+<p>A few miles further on we rested on our arms upon the summit of a ridge
+overlooking that portion of the Upper Rappahannock known as Kelly's
+Ford. The brilliant cavalry engagement of a few weeks previously, that
+occurred upon the level ground in full view above the Ford, invested it
+with peculiar interest. Who ever saw a dead cavalryman? was a question
+that had been for a long time uttered as a standing joke. Hooker's
+advent to command was attended by a sharp and <!-- Page 299 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>stirring order that
+speedily brought this arm of the service to a proper sense of duty.
+Among the first fruits of the order was this creditable fight. While no
+excuse can be given for the slovenly and ungainly riding, rusty sabres,
+and dirty accoutrements, raw-boned and uncurried horses that had too
+often made many of our cavalry regiments appear like a body of Sancho
+Panzas thrown loosely together; it would still be exceedingly unfair to
+have required as much of them as of the educated horsemen and superior
+horseflesh that gave the Rebel cavalry their efficiency in the early
+stages of the war. Since then the scales have turned. Frequent
+successful raids and resistless charges have given the courage, skill,
+and dash of our Gregg, Buford, Kilpatrick, Grierson, and others that
+might be named, honorable mention at every loyal fireside.</p>
+
+<p>While on the top of this ridge, Rush's regiment of lancers, with lances
+in rest and pennons gaily fluttering beneath the spear heads, cantered
+past the regiment. Their strange equipment gave an oriental appearance
+to the columns moving toward the ford. With straining eyes we followed
+their movement up the river and junction with the cavalry then crossing
+at a ford above the pontoons. The Regiment had been almost continually
+broken up for detached service, at different head-quarters, or for the
+purpose of halting stragglers. With many of the men, their service
+appeared like their equipment, ornamental rather than useful, and in
+connexion with their foraging reputation, won for them the expressive
+designation of "Pig Stickers."</p>
+
+<p>Darkness was just setting in when our turn came upon the pontoon bridge,
+and it was quite dark when we prepared ourselves, in a pelting rain, for
+<!-- Page 300 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>rest for the night, as we thought, in a meadow half a mile distant from
+the road. At midnight, in mud and rain, we resumed the march, in convoy
+of a pontoon train, and over a by-road which from the manner its
+primitive rock was revealed, must have been unused for years. The
+streams forded during that night of sleepless toil, the enjoined
+silence, broken only by the sloppy shuffle of shoes half filled with
+water, and the creaking wagons, the provoking halts that would tempt the
+eyes to a slumber that would be broken immediately by the resumption of
+the forward movement, have left ineffaceable memories. A somewhat
+pedantic order of "Accelerate the speed of your command, Colonel," given
+by our General of Division, as the head of the Regiment neared his
+presence towards morning, reminded us of the "long and rapid march" that
+the Commander-in-Chief intended the army to make.</p>
+
+<p>On the last day of April we crossed the Rapidan, fording its breast-deep
+current, considered too strong for the pontoons, and wondering,
+especially as the cannonading of the evening previous indicated
+resistance ahead, that our advance was not at this point impeded.
+Artillery planted upon the circling hills of the opposite shore would
+have made the passage, if even practicable, perilous to the last degree.
+As it was, however, <i>in puris naturalibus</i>, with cartridge-box on the
+musket barrel, and the musket on the shoulder, clothing in many
+instances bundled upon the head, the troops made the passage. The whys
+and the wherefores of no opposition&mdash;the confidence of Old Joe having
+stolen a march upon Johnny Reb&mdash;and the usual surmises of the
+morrow&mdash;increased in this instance by our having surprised and captured
+some Rebel pickets when just about <!-- Page 301 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>halting, constituted ample capital
+for conversation during our night's rest in a pine grove two miles south
+of the ford.</p>
+
+<p>With the Army of the Potomac the merry month of May had a lively
+opening. After a march from early dawn, we found our Division, about the
+middle of the forenoon, massed in a thick wood in the rear of a large
+and imposing brick building, which, with one or two buildings of minor
+importance, constituted what was designated upon our pocket maps as the
+town of Chancellorsville. The region of country was most appropriately
+styled "The Wilderness." A wilderness indeed, of tall oaks, and a dense
+undergrowth known as "black-jack." There were but few open places or
+improved spots. In one of the largest of these, at a point where two
+prominent roads forked, stood the large building above mentioned. The
+day previous General Lee and his staff had been hospitably entertained
+within its walls. Now our fine-looking Commander and his gay and gallant
+staff were busily engaged in its lower rooms, while the ladies of the
+house of Secesh sympathies kept themselves closely in the upper
+story,&mdash;their curiosity tempting them however, to occasional peeps from
+half-opened shutters at the blue coats below.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve, precisely, just as we had taken a position in the open ground
+abreast of the house, the sharp report of a rifled piece, followed
+quickly by the fainter explosion of a shell, was heard upon our left.
+Another and another succeeded,&mdash;indicating that the wood was being
+shelled preparatory to an advance in that direction. Slowly we filed to
+the left, proceeding by a narrow winding wood-road until the head of our
+column had almost reached the <!-- Page 302 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>river. A sudden order at this stage for
+the right about created considerable surprise, which ceased shortly
+after, as the sharp rattle of musketry, now as if picket firing, and now
+swelling into a volleyed roar, told us of a Rebel movement upon our
+flank. That our advance upon them in that direction had been quite
+unexpected, was apparent from their hastily abandoned camp grounds; rows
+of tents left standing, but slit from ridge-pole to pins; abandoned
+caissons and ammunition; and the tubs in which their rations of flour
+were kneaded, with undried dough in the corners. That they had rallied
+to regain their lost ground, was also apparent.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Dinah?" shouted one of our boys to an active young
+wench, who was wending her way from the direction of the firing as
+rapidly as the frequent contact of an extensive hooped skirt with the
+undergrowth would allow.</p>
+
+<p>"Dunno zackly, massa! Don't like de racket at all down yonder," she
+replied, making at the same time vigorous efforts to release the hold
+some bushes appeared to have upon her, upon either side. A sudden roar
+of artillery, apparently nearer by, brought matters to a crisis, and
+screaming "Oh, Lor," she loosened her clothing, and sprang out of the
+skirt with a celerity that showed the perfection of muscular
+development, and won shouts of applause from the ranks.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A sharp engagement was in progress upon a lower and almost parallel
+road. The roar of cannon, the explosion of shells, the rattle of
+musketry,&mdash;now ragged as if from detached squads,&mdash;and now volleyed as
+from full ranks, mingled with the shrill cheers or rather demoniac yells
+of the Rebels, pealing their banner cry of "Hell," in their successive
+charges, and <!-- Page 303 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>the gruff hoarse shouts of our troops, as they duly
+repulsed them, formed a most martial accompaniment to our march. The
+unity of sound of well executed volleys, told us how Sykes's Regulars
+attacked, whilst marching by the flank, halted at the word, faced to the
+left with the precision of an ordinary drill, and delivered their fire
+with murderous exactness.</p>
+
+<p>A few stray bullets flying in the direction of a temporized corral of
+pack-horses in a corner of the wood in the rear of the brick house,
+frightened their cowardly drivers, who commenced a stampede to the rear;
+and as we emerged from the road to our old position, the beasts were
+rapidly divesting themselves of their packs, in their progress through
+the undergrowth. In conjunction with this the frequent and fierce
+charges of the Rebel massed columns, favored by the smoke of the burning
+woods, made a panic imminent among the troops upon the lower road. The
+quick eye of old Joe saw the danger in a moment, and rushing from the
+house and springing upon his horse, he dashed down that road unattended,
+his manly form the mark of many a rebel rifle. Shouts of applause
+greeted him, and the continuous rattle of our musketry told us of the
+regained confidence of the men, and the renewed steadiness of our line.</p>
+
+<p>It was now four in the afternoon&mdash;the usual time with the Rebels for the
+execution of their favorite movement&mdash;charging in massed columns. On
+they came in their successive charges, howling like fiends, and with a
+courage that would have adorned an honorable cause. The steady musketry,
+but above all the terrific showers of canister from cannon that
+thundered in doublets from right to left along the <!-- Page 304 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>line of our
+batteries, could not be withstood, and they fell back in confusion. The
+nature of the ground did not permit an advance of our forces, and we
+were compelled to rest content with their repulse. An hour later our
+Division moved by still another road to the left, to a ridge in the
+neighborhood of Banks's Ford. Upon its wooded summit, with no sound to
+break in upon us save the screaming of whip-poor-wills, which the boys
+with ready augury construed to mean "whip-'em-well," and picket firing,
+that would occasionally appear to run along the line, we passed a
+comfortable night.</p>
+
+<p>Breastworks were the order of the day following, and at noon we were
+enjoying our coffee in a cleared space, behind a ridge of logs and limbs
+that fronted our entire Division, and which we would have been content
+to hold against any attacking force. Cannonading continued at intervals,
+with occasional musketry firing. As it was considerably to our right, we
+were not disturbed in our enjoyment of supplies of provisions obtained
+from vacated Rebel houses in the neighborhood. Our amusement was greatly
+contributed to, by the sight of some of the men dressed in odd clothing
+of a by-gone fashionable age. But perhaps the most interesting object
+was a Text-book upon the Divinity of Slavery, written by a Reverend
+Doctor Smith, for the use of schools; its marked lessons and dirty
+dog-ears shewing that it had troubled the brains and thumbs of youthful
+Rebels. Instilled into infant minds, and preached from their pulpits, we
+need not wonder that they, with the heartless metaphysics of northern
+sympathy, should consider slavery "an incalculable blessing," and should
+now be in arms to vindicate their treason, its legitimate offspring.</p>
+
+<p><!-- Page 305 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p><p>Cannonading had been frequent during the day; its heavy booming at times
+varied by the light rattle of the rifle. From four until eleven <span class="smcap">p. m.</span> it
+was a continuous roar, save about an hour's intermission between five
+and six. At first sounding sullenly away to the right, then gradually
+nearing, until at nightfall musketry and artillery appeared to volley
+spitefully almost upon our Division limits. It was apparent that our
+line had been broken, and apprehending the worst we anxiously stood at
+arms and awaited the onward. Nearer and nearer the howling devils came;
+louder and louder grew the sounds of conflict. The fiercest of fights
+was raging evidently in the very centre of the ground chosen as our
+stronghold. If ever the Army of the Potomac was to be demoralized by the
+shock of battle, that was the time. But the feeling was not one of fear
+with our citizen soldiery&mdash;the noblest type of manhood&mdash;rather of
+eagerness for the troops in reserve to be called into the contest. Just
+before six we heard an honest shout, as the boys would call the cheers
+of their comrades. It grew fainter; the firing became more
+distant&mdash;slackened and ceased at six, to be resumed again at seven, upon
+another and more remote line of attack.</p>
+
+<p>The terrible distinctness of this alternate howling and cheering&mdash;as
+perceptible to the ear during the thunders of the fight, as the silver
+lining that not unfrequently fringes the heavily-charged cloud is to the
+eye,&mdash;is a striking illustration of the power of the human voice. We
+were to have another, however, and that of but a single voice, which
+from the agony of soul thrown into it, and its almost supernatural
+surroundings, must eternally echo in memory.</p>
+
+<p>About three hundred yards distant from the left of our Brigade line, in
+an open field, on elevated <!-- Page 306 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>ground, stood a large and comfortable
+looking farm-house. In the morning it had been occupied; but as its
+inmates saw our skirmishers prostrating themselves on the one side in
+double lines that ran parallel to our breastworks, and the Rebel advance
+at the same time attain the edge of the wood upon the opposite
+side,&mdash;and the skirmishing that occasionally occurred along the lines
+giving promise of a fight that might centre upon their premises,&mdash;they
+packed up a few valuables and left for a place of safety. But not all.
+We read of noble Romans offering their lives in defence of faithful
+slaves. That species of self-sacrifice is a stranger to our Southern
+chivalry. In the garret of the building, upon some rags, lay an old
+woman, who had been crippled from injuries received by being scalded
+some months before, and had thus closed a term of faithful service which
+ran over fifty years, of the life of her present master and of that of
+his father before him. Worn out, and useless for further toil, she had
+been placed in the garret with other household rubbish. Her poor body
+crippled,&mdash;but a casket, nevertheless, of an immortal soul,&mdash;was not one
+of the valuables taken by the family upon their departure. As the
+thunders of the thickening fight broke in upon her loneliness, her cries
+upon the God of battles, alone powerful to save, could be heard with
+great distinctness. Isolated and under the fire of either line, there
+was no room for human relief. Her strength of voice appeared to grow
+with the increasing darkness, and above the continuous thunder of the
+cannon were the cries&mdash;"God Almighty, help me!" "Lord, save me!" "Have
+mercy on me!" shrieked and groaned in all the varied tones of mortal
+agony. Long after the firing had ceased, in fact until we moved at
+<!-- Page 307 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>early dawn, our men behind the works and in the rifle pits in front
+could hear with greater or less distinctness, as if a death wail coming
+up from the carnage of the field, the piteous plaints of that
+terror-stricken soul. Rumor has it, that before the building was fired
+by a shell in the middle of the following forenoon, her spirit had taken
+its flight; but whether or not, it could not mitigate the retributive
+justice to be measured out by that God over us all to whom vengeance
+belongs, upon the heads of the ingrates who had left her to her fate.</p>
+
+<p>We moved, as we have before mentioned, at early dawn on one of those
+fair, bright Sabbath days so happily spoken of by "good old George
+Herbert;" marching by the right flank along our works, with a hurried
+step. It was between five and six when we neared the front,&mdash;passing on
+our way out, hosts of stragglers and disorganized regiments of the
+Eleventh Corps. They had suffered badly&mdash;some said, behaved badly&mdash;and
+some said, posted in such a way that they could not but behave badly.
+The merits of the case must remain for decisive history. Conceding
+equally good generalship to both, it is not amiss to say, that what
+happened under Howard might not have happened under Sigel. The desultory
+firing along our changed front showed too plainly the ground we had lost
+the day before. In the wood, alongside of the road fronting the right
+centre of our line, our Regiment lay at arms,&mdash;listening to awfully
+exaggerated stories from stragglers,&mdash;watching the posting of artillery
+in our immediate front, the entry of Brigades into the wood upon our
+left, and their exit under skilful artillery practice,&mdash;and now and then
+dodging at the sound of the stray shells sent as return compliments from
+Rebel batteries.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Colonel; these brass-bull pups will <!-- Page 308 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>roar bloody murder at
+Johnny Reb to-day," said a fine-looking, whole-souled Lieutenant, in
+command of an Ohio battery, pointing to his pieces with pride, as he
+hurried by at a trot, to relieve a battery on our left centre.</p>
+
+<p>Poor fellow! How blind we are to futurity! His pieces were scarcely in
+position before a shell struck the caisson at which he was adjusting
+fuses, and his head, picked up at the distance of a hundred yards, was
+all that remained unshattered of his manly figure, after the explosion.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Files of wounded upon foot, full ambulances, and stretchers laden with
+the more serious cases, passed us here.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I am done for, fellows," said a slightly built, pale-faced sergeant,
+resting upon his elbow, and pointing to his shattered side, as he was
+carried by on a stretcher; "but stick to the old flag; it is bound to
+win."</p>
+
+<p>His passage along the line was greeted with cheers, that must have
+sounded gratefully to ears fast closing to earthly sounds.</p>
+
+<p>But why individualize? The heroism that may be told of such a day, is
+but a drop compared with the thousand untold currents of unselfish
+patriotism and high resolve that well up in the bosoms of our Union
+soldiers. Not that daring deeds are not performed by Rebel ranks, but&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"True fortitude is seen in great exploits,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">That justice warrants, and that wisdom guides;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">All else is towering frenzy and distraction."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>About nine in the forenoon, to the sound of lively musketry on our left,
+our Brigade left in front, <!-- Page 309 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>crossed the open space in front of the wood,
+and in the rear of a white plastered farm-house. A narrow wood-road led
+us into the wood, and filing to the left we connected with troops
+already in line of battle. The position was hardly taken before the zip!
+zip!! zip!!! of Mini&eacute; balls informed us that we were objects of especial
+interest to Rebel sharpshooters. In another minute flashes of flame and
+puffs of smoke, that appeared to rise from among the dead foliage of the
+wood&mdash;so closely did their Butternut clothing resemble leaves&mdash;revealed
+a strong, well-formed, but prostrate Rebel line. The firing now became
+general upon both sides. Fortunately our position was such that they
+overshot us. Our men continued to aim low, and delivered an effective
+fire. Three times they tried to rise preparatory to the charge, and were
+as often thrown into confusion, and forced again upon the ground. For
+nearly two long hours the rattling of musketry was incessant. Finally,
+the Rebels made the discovery that the supply of ammunition was
+exhausted upon the right, and the right itself unsupported. It, of
+course, was the point to mass upon, and on they came in solid columns to
+the charge, completely outflanking our right.</p>
+
+<p>To hold the ground with our formation was simply impossible. The order
+to retire was given; and facing by the rear rank&mdash;the Regiments
+preserving their ranks as best they could in that thicket of black-jack,
+and carrying their wounded,&mdash;among them our Major, shot through the
+chest&mdash;made their way to the open space in rear of the wood. The colors
+of our regiment were seized,&mdash;but the first Rebel hand upon them relaxed
+from a death shot,&mdash;another was taken with the Regiment,&mdash;and the flag
+brought off in triumph. So completely had <!-- Page 310 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>they gained our flank that
+our ranks became mixed with theirs, and nothing but the opportune fire
+of our batteries prevented their taking away a Field Officer, who twice
+escaped from their hands.</p>
+
+<p>As our Brigade re-formed in the rear of the batteries, treble charges of
+canister swept the woods of the Rebel ranks. We had suffered heavily,
+but nothing in comparison to the destruction now visited upon the
+Rebels. To complete the horrors of the day, the wood was suddenly fired,
+evidently to cover their retreat, and the fire swept to the open space,
+enveloping in flame and smoke the dead and wounded of both sides; and
+all this at the very time when throughout the length and breadth of this
+Christian land, thousands of churches were resonant with the words of
+the Gospel of Peace. But "Woe be unto those by whom offences come."
+"They have taken the sword, and must perish by the sword."</p>
+
+<p>So completely were the Rebels masters of the only available fighting
+ground that no further effort was made to advance our lines, and the
+army stood strictly upon the defensive. The open space, in which stood
+the Chancellorsville mansion, at this time a mass of smoking ruins, was
+in their possession. At arms behind the breastworks we awaited the
+onset; but although there was occasional firing, no general attack was
+made during the remainder of the day. With the thanks of our Corps
+Commander publicly given for services during the fight, our Brigade
+rested at night, speculating upon which side the heavy firing told then
+heard in the vicinity of Fredericksburg.</p>
+
+<p>During the next day we were stationed as a Reserve upon the right, and
+called to arms frequently <!-- Page 311 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>during the day and night, when the Rebels
+with their unearthly yells would tempt our artillery by charging upon
+the works. On the day after we were moved to support the centre, and
+kept continually at arms. In the afternoon a violent thunderstorm
+raged&mdash;the dread artillery of Heaven teaching us humility by its
+striking contrast to the counterfeit thunder of our cannon. Rain
+generally follows heavy cannonading. All that afternoon and the greater
+part of the night it fell in torrents. Cannonading in the direction of
+Fredericksburg had ceased during the day. Sedgwick's disastrous movement
+was not generally known,&mdash;but our wounded had all been sent off;&mdash;our
+few wagon trains and our pack-horses had crossed,&mdash;and notwithstanding
+the show of fight kept up in front, enough was seen to indicate that the
+army was about to recross the Rappahannock.</p>
+
+<p>Favored by the darkness, battery after battery was quietly withdrawn,
+their respective Army Corps accompanying in Regiments of two abreast.</p>
+
+<p>The movement was in painful contrast to the spirited order that gave
+such a merry May-day to our hope upon the first of the month. In blouses
+that smoked that wet night around camp fires kept up for the purpose of
+misleading the enemy, our men stood discussing the orders, and the
+counter-orders, and what had happened, and what might happen, from the
+step. Hooker had credit for the successful execution of his part of the
+programme. What was wrong below was conjecture then, and does not yet
+appear to be certainly understood.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Where is Old Pigey?" said one of a group of officers, suddenly turning
+to a comrade, as they <!-- Page 312 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>stood about one of their camp fires. "He has not
+been near our Brigade during the day."</p>
+
+<p>"No! nor near the other, except to damn it in such a style as to draw
+down the rebuke of a superior officer," replied the man addressed.
+"Follow me, if you desire to see how a 'cool, courageous man of
+science,' one, whose face, as the Reporters say of him, 'indicates
+tremendous power in reserve,' meets this crisis."</p>
+
+<p>The two retired, and on a camp stool, with cloak wrapped closely about
+him, in front of a fire whose bright blaze gave him enormous proportions
+upon the dark background of pines, surrounded by his Staff, his hat more
+pinched up and askew than usual, and receiving frequent consolation from
+a long, black bottle, evidently his power in reserve upon this occasion,
+the General was discovered in a pensive mood.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," continued the officer, "that he reports, as a reason for
+his absence to-day, that he did not consider it prudent to be near our
+Brigade during the loading and firing exercise."</p>
+
+<p>"The torturing of a guilty conscience," was the reply. "Our men, as true
+soldiers, know but one enemy in the field."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>At length, at two in the morning of the 6th of May, we cautiously
+commenced our movement to the river. The dawn of a rainy day saw us
+formed in line of battle, supporting artillery planted to protect the
+crossing. About eight our turn came upon the swollen stream. The rain
+pelted piteously as we ascended the steep slope of the opposite bank,
+and after a day's march over roads resembling rivers of mud, we slept
+away our sorrows under wet blankets, in the comfortable huts of our old
+camp ground.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:center;">
+<img src="images/end_cap.jpg" width="200" height="64" alt="end of chapter decoration"  /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><!-- Page 313 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h3>
+
+<p><i>The Pigeon-hole General and his Adjutant under Charges&mdash;The Exhorting
+Colonels Adieu to the Sunday Fight at Chancellorsville; Reasons
+thereof&mdash;Speech of the Dutch Doctor in Reply to a Peace-Offering from
+the Chaplain&mdash;The Irish Corporal stumping for Freedom&mdash;Black Charlie's
+Compliments to his Master&mdash;Western Virginia at the Head of a Black
+Regiment.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="smcap"><span class="i20">"Head-Quarters, &mdash;&mdash; Division.</span></span></p></div></div>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p><span class="i22">"&mdash;&mdash;<span class="smcap">Army Corps</span>,
+<i>7th May, 1863</i>.</span></p></div></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">"General Orders, No. 22.</span></p>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>"The term of service of six of the eight Regiments forming my
+Division is about to expire. In the midst of the pressing duties of
+an active Campaign there is but little time for leave-taking, yet I
+cannot part from the brave officers and men of my command without
+expressing to them the satisfaction and pride I have felt at their
+conduct, from the time when I assumed command, as they marched
+through Washington, in September last, to join the Army of the
+Potomac, then about to meet the Enemy, up to the present eventful
+period.</p>
+
+<p>"The cheerfulness with which they have borne the unaccustomed
+fatigues and hardships which it is <!-- Page 314 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>the lot of the soldier to
+endure; their zealous efforts to learn the multifarious duties of
+the soldier; the high spirit they have exhibited when called on to
+make long and painful marches to meet the enemy, and their bravery
+in the field of battle have won my regard and affection. I shall
+part from them with deep regret, and wish them, as the time of each
+regiment expires, a happy return to their families and friends.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i22">"&mdash;&mdash; &mdash;&mdash;,<br /></span>
+<span class="i20">"Brig. Gen'l Com'g Division."<br /></span>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>However profound the <i>regret</i> of the General at parting, he must, from
+the phraseology of the above Order, have been conscious, that in his own
+conduct was to be found the reason that such regret was not in the least
+reciprocated by his command. So completely had he aliened the affections
+of officers and men that the ordinary salute in recognition of his rank
+was given grudgingly, if at all. When there is no gold in the character,
+men are not backward in proclaiming that they consider</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"The rank is but the guinea's stamp."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>As their campaign approached its close, he added studied insult to long
+continued injury. His inconsistency, and willingness to make use of a
+quibble for the accomplishment of tyrannical purposes were shown by his
+non-approval of the requisition for dress coats, when it was handed in
+by the officer in command of the Regiment, a short time after the
+removal of the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel for refusing to obey the
+order requiring it. Charges had been preferred against his
+Adjutant-General for <!-- Page 315 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>repeated instances of "Drunkenness upon Duty,"
+"Disgraceful Conduct," and "Conduct unbecoming an Officer and a
+Gentleman." They were returned to the Brigadier, through whom they had
+been submitted, with an insulting note, in which the General took
+occasion to state, by way of pre-judgment, that the charges were
+malicious and false, notwithstanding the scores of names appended as
+witnesses;&mdash;and that no <i>Volunteer Captain</i> had a right to prefer
+charges against one of his Staff; and that it was the duty of the
+Brigadier to discountenance any charges of the kind. They were again
+forwarded, with the statement of the Brigadier, that the charges were
+eminently proper, and that he himself would prefer them, should
+objection be taken to the rank of the officer whose signature was
+attached. But pigeon-holing was a favorite smothering process at
+Division Head-Quarters, and the drunken and disgraceful conduct of the
+Adjutant-General remains unpunished.</p>
+
+<p>Charges supported by a large array of reputable witnesses, ranking from
+Brigadier to Privates, were preferred against the General himself, for
+"Drunkenness," "Un-officerlike conduct," "Conduct tending to mutiny,"
+and the utterance of the following treasonable and disloyal
+sentiments:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"That he wished some one would ask the army to follow General
+McClellan to Washington, and hurl the whole d&mdash;&mdash;d pack into the
+Potomac, and place General McClellan at the head of the
+Government,&mdash;that the removal of the said General McClellan was a
+political move to kill the said General; and that the army had
+better be taken to Washington, and turned over to Lincoln."</p></div>
+
+<p><!-- Page 316 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p><p>Charges and specifications, of one of the latter of which the above
+is an extract, alleged that the offence was committed at Camp near
+Warrenton, about the time of McClellan's removal. Whether they too have
+been pigeon-holed at Division Head-Quarters is not known. Attention to
+their merit was promised by superior officers. The patriotic sacrifices
+of our citizen soldiery are surely worthy of an unceasing and unsparing
+effort to procure loyal, temperate, and capable commanders. A timely
+trial, besides affording a salutary example, might have done much in
+preventing the disgraceful Rebel escape at Williamsport, which alone
+dims the glory of Gettysburg.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The last that was seen of the exhorting Colonel and his Adjutant, was
+their sudden exit from the wood at Chancellorsville, in an early stage
+of Sunday's fight,&mdash;the one with a slight wound, and the other with a
+headache caused by the cannonading, as alleged. A performance which has
+not, thus far, brought the coveted star.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I propose the health of the Assistant Surgeon," said the Chaplain, at a
+supper given by the Sutler on the day of our muster out, and the
+occasion of the presentation of a costly sword to our worthy
+Colonel,&mdash;proposing thereby to make an advance towards healing their
+differences. The Doctor could not escape; and winking, as usual with him
+during excitement, he rose to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"My ver goot kind friend, the English language he am a shtranger to me.
+No shpeak so goot as Shaplain, but py tam," and the Doctor struck the
+<!-- Page 317 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>table until the plates rattled&mdash;"was py the Shaplain over six month,
+and my opinion is, Shaplains, women, and whiskey not goot for soldiers."</p>
+
+<p>The Doctor's look and tones were irresistibly ludicrous, and a roar of
+laughter at the expense of the Chaplain ran round the board.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The Regiment returned with ranks sadly thinned. Many of the survivors;
+among them, most of the Field and Staff, the poetical and the preacher
+Lieutenants, and privates Tom and Harry,&mdash;have re-entered service. The
+two latter now carry swords.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Bill the cook is the presiding genius of a restaurant; his face, in the
+way of reminding one of hot stews and pepper-pot, his best sign.
+Charlie, his assistant, was last noticed in a photographic establishment
+in Philadelphia; inclosing a full length card portrait of himself in
+uniform, as a Corporal in a Black Regiment, for the benefit of his
+master's family in Dixie.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The little Irish Corporal was heard to tell a brawling peace man,&mdash;as he
+menaced with the stump of an arm,&mdash;lost at Chancellorsville&mdash;in a saloon
+a short time after his return, to "hould his tongue; that the boys who
+had lost limbs in defence of the country were the chappies to stump for
+freedom, and that they would keep down all fires in the rear, while our
+brave boys are fighting in front."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A late mail brings the news that our Western Virginia Captain is soon to
+take the field at the head of a Black Regiment, and that the happiest
+results are <!-- Page 318 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>anticipated from his enforcement of military law and
+tactics, as learned by him under "Old Rosy," in Western Virginia.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Thus we go on. Necessity hastens the progress of civilization and
+freedom. Desolating war&mdash;protracted by mistaken leniency&mdash;has educated
+the nation to a proper sense of the treason, and nerved it to the
+determination to crush it by all possible means and at every hazard. The
+man who has heretofore objected to Negro enlistments, acquiesces when
+his own name appears upon the list of the Enrolling Officer. The day
+that saw the change in the miserable, not to say treasonable, policy of
+alienating the only real friends we have had in the South, and their
+successful employment as soldiers, stands first in the decline of the
+Rebellion. Its suppression is fixed, and is to be measured by the vigor
+with which we press the war.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Vengeance is secure to him<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Who doth arm himself with right."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center">THE END.<br /></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>NEW BOOKS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">And New Editions Recently Issued by</p>
+
+<p class="center">CARLETON, PUBLISHER,</p>
+
+<p class="center">(Late RUDD &amp; CARLETON,)</p>
+
+<p class="center">413 BROADWAY, NEW YORK.</p>
+
+<p>N.B.&mdash;The Publisher, upon receipt of the price in advance, will send any
+of the following Books, by mail, <span class="smcap">postage free</span>, to any part of the United
+States. This convenient and very safe mode may be adopted when the
+neighboring Booksellers are not supplied with the desired work. State
+name and address in full.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><b>Victor Hugo.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">LES MISERABLES.</span>&mdash;The only unabridged English translation of "the
+grandest and best Novel ever written." One large octavo vol., paper
+covers, $1.00, or cloth bound, $1.50</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">LES MISERABLES.</span>&mdash;A superior edition of the same Novel, in five handsome
+octavo vols.&mdash;"Fantine," "Cosette," "Marius," "St. Denis," and
+"Valjean." Cloth bound, each vol., $1.00</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE LIFE OF VICTOR HUGO.</span>&mdash;Told by a Witness (understood to be an
+Autobiography). "Charming and interesting as a Novel." ... One octavo
+vol., cloth bound, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>By the Author of "Rutledge."</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">RUTLEDGE.</span>&mdash;A very powerful Novel.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cl. bound,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">THE SUTHERLANDS.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">FRANK WARRINGTON.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">LOUIE'S LAST TERM AT ST. MARY'S.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Hand-Books of Good Society.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE HABITS OF GOOD SOCIETY</span>; with Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes,
+concerning nice points of taste, good manners, and the art of making
+oneself agreeable. Reprinted from the London Edition. The best and most
+entertaining work of the kind ever published. 12mo. cloth bound, $1.50</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE ART OF CONVERSATION.</span>&mdash;A book of information, amusement, and
+instruction, and one that ought to be in the hands of every one who
+wishes to be an agreeable talker or listener. 12mo. cloth bound, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Mrs. Mary J. Holmes' Works.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;"  summary="">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">MARIAN GREY.</span>&mdash;A Novel</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cloth bound,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">LENA RIVERS.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">MEADOW BROOK.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">HOMESTEAD ON THE HILLSIDE</span>.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">DORA DEANE.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">COUSIN MAUDE.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.</span>&mdash;(In press.)</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Artemus Ward.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">HIS BOOK.</span>&mdash;An irresistibly funny volume of writings by the immortal
+American humorist and showman; with plenty of comic illustrations to
+match. 12mo. cl. bound, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Miss Augusta J. Evans.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">BEULAH.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">A novel of great power and interest.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">Cl. bd.,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">A novel.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. d. bound,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">UNDERCURRENTS.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">SAINT LEGER.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">ROMANCE OF STUDENT LIFE.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">IN THE TROPICS.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">Edited by R. B. Kimball.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Cuthbert Bede.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE ADVENTURES OF VERDANT GREEN.</span>&mdash;A rollicking, humorous novel of
+student life in an English University; with more than 200 comic
+illustrations. 12mo. cl. bd., $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Edmund Kirke.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">AMONG THE PINES.</span>&mdash;A thrilling picture of life at the South. 12mo., paper
+covers, 75 cts., or cloth bound, $1.00</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">MY SOUTHERN FRIENDS; OR, LIFE IN DIXIE.</span>&mdash;12mo., paper covers, 75 cts.,
+or cloth bound, $1.00</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">WHAT I SAW IN TENNESSEE.</span>&mdash;Paper, 75 cts., or cl. bd., $1.00</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>The Central Park.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE ORIGIN, PROGRESS, AND DESCRIPTION OF THE MAGNIFICENT CENTRAL PARK AT
+NEW YORK.</span>&mdash;Beautifully illustrated with more than 50 exquisite
+photographs of the principal views and objects of interest. One large
+quarto, sumptuously bound in Turkey morocco, $25.00</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Ernest Renan.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE LIFE OF JESUS.</span>&mdash;Translated from the original French by C. E.
+Wilbour. 12mo. cloth bound, $1.50</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><b>A. S. Roc's Works.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">A LONG LOOK AHEAD.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">A novel.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cloth,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;"> $1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">I'VE BEEN THINKING.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">TRUE TO THE LAST.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">THE STAR AND THE CLOUD.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">HOW COULD HE HELP IT.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">LIKE AND UNLIKE.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">TO LOVE AND TO BE LOVED.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">TIME AND TIDE.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Walter Barrett, Clerk.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE OLD MERCHANTS OF NEW YORK CITY.</span>&mdash;Being personal incidents,
+interesting sketches, and bits of biography concerning nearly every
+leading merchant in New York. Two series, 12mo. cloth bound, each, $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Rev. John Cummins. D.D., of London.</b></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE GREAT TRIBULATION; OR, THINGS COMING ON THE EARTH.</span>&mdash;Two series,
+12mo. cloth bound, each, $1.00</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE GREAT PREPARATION; REDEMPTION DRAWETH NIGH.</span>&mdash;Two series. 12mo. cloth
+bound, each, $1.00</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">THE GREAT CONSUMMATION; OR, THE WORLD AS IT WILL BE.</span>&mdash;Two series. 12mo.
+cloth bound, each, $1.00</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">TEACH US TO PRAY.</span>&mdash;A volume of devotional sermons on the Lord's Prayer.
+12mo. cloth bound, $1.00</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>M. Michelet's Works.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">LOVE (L'AMOUR).</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">Translated from the French.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">12m. cl.,  $1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">WOMAN (LA FEMME.)</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">Translated from the French.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">THE MORAL HISTORY OF WOMEN.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">WOMAN MADE FREE.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">From the French of D'Hericourt.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Novels by Ruffini.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">DR. ANTONIO.</span>&mdash;A love story of Italy.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cloth,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">LAVINIA; OR, THE ITALIAN ARTIST.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">DEAR EXPERIENCE.</span>&mdash;With humorous illustrations</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td><span class="smcap">VINCENZO; OR, SUNKEN ROCKS.</span>&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">Paper covers.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$0.75</td>
+</tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>F. D. Guerrazzi.</b></p>
+
+<p>BEATRICE CENCI.-A historical novel. Translated from the Italian; with a
+portrait of the Cenci, from Guido's famous picture in Rome. 12mo. cloth
+bound, $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Fred. S. Cozzens.</b></p>
+
+<p>THE SPARROWGRASS PAPERS.&mdash;A laughable picture of Sparrowgrass's
+trials in living in the country; with humorous
+illustrations by Darley.  12mo. cl. bound, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Epes Sargent.</b></p>
+
+<p>PECULIAR.&mdash;A very clever new novel. 12mo. cloth, $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Charles Reade.</b></p>
+
+<p>THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH; OR, MAID, WIFE, AND WIDOW.&mdash;
+A magnificent historical novel. By the Author of "Peg Woffington,"
+etc. Reade's best work. Octavo, cl. bd., $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers.</b></p>
+
+<p>A collection of exquisitely satirical and humorous military
+criticisms. Two series. 12mo. cloth bound, each, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>T. S. Arthur's New Works.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%" summary="">
+<tr><td>LIGHT ON SHADOWED PATHS.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12m. cl.,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;"> $1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>OUT IN THE WORLD.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">(In press.)</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">do.</td>
+</tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Stephen Massett.</b></p>
+
+<p>DRIFTING ABOUT.&mdash;By "Jeems Pipes," of Pipesville; with
+many comic illustrations. 12mo. cloth, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Joseph Rodman Drake.</b></p>
+
+<p>THE CULPRIT FAY.&mdash;A faery poem; tinted paper, cloth, 50 cts.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Mother Goose for Grown Folks.</b></p>
+
+<p>Humorous rhymes for grown people; based upon the famous
+"Mother Goose Melodies." Tinted paper, cl. bd., 75 cts.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Hearton Drille.</b></p>
+
+<p>TACTICS; OR, CUPID IN SHOULDER STRAPS.&mdash;A vivacious and
+witty West Point love story. 12mo. cloth, $1.00</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>J. C. Jeaffreson.</b></p>
+
+<p>A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS.&mdash;A humorous and entertaining volume
+of sketches about famous physicians and surgeons.
+12mo. cloth, $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Jas. H. Hackett.</b></p>
+
+<p>NOTES AND COMMENTS ON SHAKSPEARE.&mdash;By the great American
+Falstaff; with portrait of the Author. 12mo. cl., $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>New Sporting Work</b></p>
+
+<p>THE GAME FISH OF THE NORTH.&mdash;An entertaining as well as
+instructive volume. Illustrated. 12mo. cloth, $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Doesticks' Humorous Works.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td>DOESTICKS; WHAT HE SAYS.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">With comic illusts.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12m. cl.,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>PLURIBUSTAH.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE ELEPHANT CLUB.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>H. De Balzac's Novels.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td>CESAR BIROTTEAU.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">Translated from the French,</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12m. cl.,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>PETTY ANNOYANCES OF MARRIED LIFE.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE ALCHEMIST.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>EUGENIE GRANDET.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>D. D. Home (or Hume).</b></p>
+
+<p>INCIDENTS IN MY LIFE.&mdash;By the celebrated spirit medium;
+with an introduction by Judge Edmonds. 12mo. cl., $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Thomas Bailey Aldrich.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td>BABIE BELL, AND OTHER POEMS.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">Blue and gold binding,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>OUT OF HIS head.&mdash;An eccentric romance.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cl.,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Adam Gurowski.</b></p>
+
+<p>DIARY.&mdash;During the years 1861 to '63, in Washington. Two
+volumes, each,           $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Edmund C. Stedman.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td>ALICE OF MONMOUTH.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo., tinted paper, cloth,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;"> $1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>LYRICS AND IDYLS.&mdash;</td>
+<td>  </td>
+<td style="text-align:right;"> 75 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE PRINCE'S BALL.&mdash;With humorous illustrations.</td>
+<td>  </td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">50 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Alexander Von Humboldt.</b></p>
+
+<p>LIFE AND TRAVELS.&mdash;With an introduction by Bayard Taylor.
+A book for every library. 12mo. cloth, $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Richard H. Stoddard.</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td>THE KING'S BELL.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cloth bound, tinted paper,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">75 cts.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>THE MORGESONS.&mdash;A novel.  By Mrs. R. H. Stoddard.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">  </td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td></tr></table>
+
+<p class="center"><b>M. T. Walworth.</b></p>
+
+<p>LULU.&mdash;A novel of life in Washington. 12mo. cloth, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Hugh Miller.</b></p>
+
+<p>A LIFE of the great Geologist and Author.  12mo. clo., $1.50</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Miss Dinah Muloch.</b></p>
+
+<p>A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN.&mdash;A new work by the
+Author of "John Halifax," etc. 12mo. cloth, $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="center"><b>Isaac Taylor.</b></p>
+
+<p>THE SPIRIT OF HEBREW POETRY.&mdash;With a biographical introduction
+by Wm. Adams, D.D., of N. Y.  8vo. cl., $2.50</p>
+
+
+<p class="center"><b>Miscellaneous Works</b></p>
+
+<table style="width: 100%;" summary="">
+<tr><td>HUSBAND &amp; WIFE; OR, HUMAN DEVELOPMENT.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cloth,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;"> $1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>ROCKFORD.&mdash;A novel. By Mrs. L. D. Umsted.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>SOUTHWOLD.&mdash;   do.          do. </td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>WANDERINGS OF A BEAUTY.&mdash;By Mrs. Edwin James.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE YACHTMAN'S PRIMER.&mdash;By T. R. Warren.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">50 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>SPREES AND SPLASHES.&mdash;By Henry Morford.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE U. S. TAX LAW.&mdash;"Government Edition."</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">75 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE PRISONER OF STATE.&mdash;By D. A. Mahony.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE PARTISAN LEADER.&mdash;By Beverly Tucker.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>CHINA AND THE CHINESE.&mdash;By W. L. G. Smith.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;"> do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>AROUND THE PYRAMIDS.&mdash;By Gen. Aaron Ward.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>TREATISE ON DEAFNESS.&mdash;By E. B. Lighthill, M.D.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.&mdash;By John G. Saxe.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">50 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>NATIONAL CHESS BOOK.&mdash;By D. W. Fiske.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>GARRET VAN HORN.&mdash;By J. S. Sauzade.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>TWENTY YEARS AROUND THE WORLD. J. G. Vassar.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">8vo.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$3.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>NATIONAL HYMNS.&mdash;By Richard Grant White.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">8vo.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>FORT LAFAYETTE.&mdash;By Benjamin Wood.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cloth,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>ALFIO BALZANI&mdash;By Domenico Minnelli.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE NATIONAL SCHOOL FOR THE SOLDIER.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">50 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>ORIENTAL HAREMS.&mdash;Translated from the French.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>LOLA MONTEZ.&mdash;Her life and lectures.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>ESSAYS.&mdash;By George Brimley.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>GEN. NATHANIEL LYON.&mdash;A life.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>PHILIP THAXTER.&mdash;A novel.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>FROM HAYING TIME TO HOPPING.&mdash;A novel.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE.&mdash;By E. S. Gould.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>MARRIED OFF.&mdash;An illustrated poem.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">50 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>ROUMANIA.&mdash;By Dr. Jas. O. Noyes.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>HUSBAND <i>vs.</i> WIFE.&mdash;A poem illustrated.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">50 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>BROWN'S CARPENTER'S ASSISTANT.&mdash;</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">4to.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$5.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>TRANSITION.&mdash;Edited by Rev. H. S. Carpenter.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo. cloth,</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>DEBT AND GRACE.&mdash;By Rev. C. F. Hudson.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>THE VAGABOND.&mdash;By Adam Badeau</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.00</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>COSMOGONY.&mdash;By Thos. A. Davies</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">8vo.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>ANSWER TO HUGH MILLER.&mdash;By T. A. Davies.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">12mo.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>EDGAR POE AND HIS CRITICS.&mdash;By Mrs. Whitman.</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">75 cts.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td>HARTLEY NORMAN.&mdash;A novel</td>
+<td style="text-align:center;">do.</td>
+<td style="text-align:right;">$1.25</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:</p>
+
+<p>The author, "A Citizen-Soldier", is a pseudonym for William H. Armstrong.
+"Old Pigey" is believed to be based on General Arthur A. Humphreys.</p>
+
+<p>This text has been edited to standardize representation of censored
+words. Additionally, hyphens have been added to some phrases, to provide
+consistency.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, by 
+William H. Armstrong
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+</pre>
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,10092 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, by
+William H. Armstrong
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals
+       As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac
+
+Author: William H. Armstrong
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2007 [EBook #23565]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RED-TAPE AND PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by D. Alexander and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ RED-TAPE
+
+ AND
+
+ PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS:
+
+ AS SEEN FROM THE RANKS
+
+ DURING A
+
+ +Campaign in the Army of the Potomac+.
+
+
+ BY
+
+ A CITIZEN-SOLDIER.
+
+ "We must be brief when Traitors brave the Field."
+
+
+ NEW YORK:
+
+ _Carleton, Publisher, 413 Broadway._
+
+ M DCCC LXIV.
+
+
+
+
+ Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
+
+ GEO. W. CARLETON,
+
+ In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
+ the Southern District of New York.
+
+
+ R. CRAIGHEAD,
+
+ Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper
+
+ +Carton Building+,
+
+ _81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+"Greek-fire has shivered the statue of John C. Calhoun in the streets of
+the City of Charleston,"--so the papers say. Whether true or not, the
+Greek-fire of the righteous indignation of a loyal people is fast
+shattering the offspring of his infamous teachings,--the armed treason
+of the South, and its more cowardly ally the insidious treachery that
+lurks under doubtful cover in the loyal States. In thunder tones do the
+masses declare, that now and for ever, they repudiate the Treason and
+despise the Traitor. Nobly are the hands of our Honest President
+sustained in prosecuting this most righteous war.
+
+In a day like this, the least that can be expected of any citizen
+is--duty. We are all co-partners in our beneficent government. We should
+be co-laborers for her defence. Jealous of the interests of her brave
+soldiery; for they are our own. Proud of their noble deeds; they
+constitute our National Heritage.
+
+If these campaign sketches, gathered in actual service during 1862-3,
+and grouped during the spare hours of convalescence from a camp fever,
+correct one of the least of the abuses in our military machinery--if
+they lighten the toil of the humblest of our soldiers, or nerve anew the
+resolves of loyalty tempted to despair, the writer will have no reason
+to complain of labor lost. Great latitude of excuse for the existence of
+abuses must be allowed, when we consider the suddenness with which our
+volunteers sprang into ranks at the outset of the Rebellion. Now that
+the warfare is a system, there is less reason for their continuance.
+Reformers must, however, remember, that to keep our citizen-soldiery
+effective, they must not make too much of the citizen and too little of
+the soldier. Abuses must be corrected under the laws; but to be
+corrected at all they must first be exposed.
+
+Drunkenness, half-heartedness, and senseless routine, have done much to
+cripple the patriotic efforts of our people. The patriotism of the man
+who at this day doubts the policy of their open reproof can well be
+questioned. West Point has, in too many instances, nursed imbecility and
+treason; but in our honest contempt for the small men of whom, in common
+with other institutions, she has had her share,--we must not ignore
+those bright pages of our history adorned with the skill and heroism of
+her nobler sons. McClellanism did not follow its chief from Warrenton;
+or Burnside's earnestness, Hooker's dash, and Meade's soldierly stand at
+Gettysburg, backed as they were by the heroic fighting of the Army of
+the Potomac, would have had, as they deserved, more decisive results.
+
+The Young Men of the Land would the writer address in the following
+pages--"because they are strong," and in their strength is the nation's
+hope. In certain prospect of victory over the greatest enemy we have yet
+had as a nation--the present infamous rebellion--we can well await
+patiently the correction of minor evils.
+
+          "Meanwhile we'll sacrifice to liberty,
+          Remember, O my friends! the laws, the rights,
+          The generous plan of power delivered down
+          From age to age by your renowned forefathers,
+          (So dearly bought, the price of so much blood;)
+          Oh, let it never perish in your hands!
+          But piously transmit it to your children.
+          Do thou, great liberty! inspire our souls,
+          And make our lives in thy possession happy.
+          Or our deaths glorious in thy just defence."
+
+February, 1864.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I.                                                             PAGE
+
+The Advent of our General of Division--Camp near Frederick City,
+Maryland--The Old Revolutionary Barracks at Frederick--An Irish
+Corporal's Recollections of the First Regiment of Volunteers from
+Pennsylvania--Punishment in the Old First,                                9
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+The Treason at Harper's Ferry--Rebel Occupation of Frederick--Patriotism
+of the Ladies of Frederick--A Rebel Guard nonplussed by a Lady--The
+Approach to Antietam--Our Brigadier cuts Red-Tape--THE BLUNDER OF THE
+DAY AFTER ANTIETAM--The Little Irish Corporal's idea of Strategy,        15
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The March to the River--Our Citizen Soldiery--Popularity of Commanders,
+how Lost and how Won--The Rebel Dead--How the Rebels repay Courtesy,     27
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A Regimental Baker--Hot Pies--Position of the Baker in line of
+Battle--Troubles of the Baker--A Western Virginia Captain on a Whiskey
+Scent--The Baker's Story--How to obtain Political Influence--Dancing
+Attendance at Washington--What Simon says--Confiscation of Whiskey,      33
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The Scene at the Surgeon's Quarters--Our Little Dutch Doctor--Incidents
+of his Practice--His Messmate the Chaplain--The Western Virginia
+Captain's account of a Western Virginia Chaplain--His Solitary Oath--How
+he Preached, how he Prayed, and how he Bush-whacked--His Revenge of
+Snowden's Death--How the little Dutch Doctor applied the Captain's
+Story,                                                                   47
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A Day at Division Head-Quarters--The Judge Advocate--The tweedle-dum and
+tweedle-dee of Red-Tape as understood by Pigeon-hole Generals--Red Tape
+Reveries--French Authorities on Pigeon-hole Investigations--An
+Obstreperous Court and Pigeon-hole Strictures--Disgusting Head-Quarter
+Profanity,                                                               59
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac--Fitz John's Rail Order--Rails for
+Corps Head-Quarters _versus_ Rails for Hospitals--The Western Virginia
+Captain--Old Rosy, and How to Silence Secesh Women--The Old Woman's
+Fixin's--The Captain's Orderly,                                          70
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The Reconnoissance--Shepherdstown--Punch and Patriotism--Private Tom on
+West Point and Southern Sympathy--The Little Irish Corporal on John
+Mitchell--A Skirmish--Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and
+Chaplain--Battle of Falling Waters not intended--Story of the Little
+Irish Corporal--Patterson's Folly, or Treason,                           83
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Reconnoissance concluded--What we Saw and What we didn't See, and what
+the Good Public Read--Pigeon-hole Generalship and the Press--The
+Preacher Lieutenant and how he Recruited--Comparative Merits of Black
+Union Men and White Rebels--A Ground Blast, and its effect upon a
+Pigeon-hole General--Staff Officers Striking a Snag in the Western
+Virginia Captain--Why the People have a right to expect Active Army
+Movements--Red Tape and the Sick List--Pigeon-holing at Division
+Head-quarters,                                                          100
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Departure from Sharpsburg Camp--The Old Woman of Sandy Hook--Harper's
+Ferry--South sewing Dragon's Teeth by shedding Old John's Blood--The
+Dutch Doctor and the Boar--Beauties of Tobacco--Camp Life on the
+Character--Patrick, Brother to the Little Corporal--General Patterson no
+Irishman--Guarding a Potato Patch in Dixie--The Preacher Lieutenant on
+Emancipation--Inspection and the Exhorting Colonel--The Scotch Tailor on
+Military Matters,                                                       116
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+Snicker's Gap--Private Harry on the "Anaconda"--Not inclined to turn
+Boot-Black--"Oh! why did you go for a Soldier?"--The
+ex-News-Boy--Pigeon-hole Generalship on the March--The Valley of the
+Shenandoah--A Flesh Carnival--The Dutch Doctor on a Horse-dicker--An Old
+Rebel, and how he parted with his Apple-Brandy--Toasting the
+"Union"--Spruce Retreats,                                               137
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+The March to Warrenton--Secesh Sympathy and Quarter-Master's
+Receipts--Middle-Borough--The Venerable Uncle Ned and his Story of the
+Captain of the Tigers--The Adjutant on Strategy--Red Tapism and
+Mac-Napoleonism--Movement Stopped--Division Head-Quarters out of
+Whiskey--Stragglers and Marauders--A Summary Proceeding--Persimmons and
+Picket-Duty--A Rebellious Pig--McClellanism,                            160
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Camp near Warrenton--Stability of the Republic--Measures, not Men,
+regarded by the Public--Removal of McClellan--Division Head-Quarters a
+House of Mourning--A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point
+Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box--Head-Quarter Murmuring and
+Mutterings--Departure of Little Mac and the Prince--Cheering by Word of
+Command--The Southern Saratoga--Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure,  178
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A Skulker and the Dutch Doctor--A Review of the Corps by Old Joe--A
+Change of Base; what it means to the Soldier, and what to the
+Public--Our Quarter-Master and General Hooker--The Movement by the Left
+Flank--A Division General and Dog driving--The Desolation of Virginia--A
+Rebel Land-Owner and the Quarter-Master--"No Hoss, Sir!"--The Poetical
+Lieutenant unappreciated--Mutton or Dog?--Desk Drudgery and Senseless
+Routine,                                                                193
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Red-Tape and the Soldier's Widow--Pigeon-holing at Head-Quarters and
+Weeping at the Family Fireside--A Pigeon-hole General Outwitted--Fishing
+for a Discharge--The Little Irish Corporal on Topographical
+Engineers--Guard Duty over a Whiskey Barrel,                            210
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+The Battle of Fredericksburg--Screwing Courage up to the Sticking
+Point--Consolations of a Flask--Pigeon-hole Nervousness--Abandonment of
+Knapsacks--Incidents before, during, and after the Fight,               225
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+The Sorrows of the Sutler--The Sutler's Tent--Generals manufactured by
+the Dailies--Fighting and Writing--A Glandered
+Horse--Courts-martial--Mania of a Pigeon-hole General on the
+Subject--Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel in Strait-Jackets,              247
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Dress Coats _versus_ Blouses--Military Law--Bill the
+Cook--Courts-Martial--Important Decision in Military Law--A Man with Two
+Blouses on, can be compelled to put a Dress Coat on top--A Colored
+French Cook and a Beefy-browed Judge-Advocate--The Mud March--No
+Pigeon-holing on a Whiskey Scent--Old Joe in Command--Dissolution of
+Partnership between the Dutch Doctor and the Chaplain,                  264
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The Presentation Mania--The Western Virginia Captain in the War
+Department--Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton--Capture of the Dutch
+Doctor--A Genuine Newspaper Sell,                                       283
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The Army again on the Move--Pack Mules and Wagon Trains--A Negro
+Prophetess--The Wilderness--Hooped Skirts and Black Jack--The Five Days'
+Fight at Chancellorsville--Terrible Death of an Aged Slave--A
+Pigeon-hole General's "Power in Reserve,"                               295
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The Pigeon-hole General and his Adjutant, under Charges--The Exhorting
+Colonel's Adieu to the Sunday Fight at Chancellorsville; Reasons
+thereof--Speech of the Dutch Doctor in Reply to a Peace-Offering from
+the Chaplain--The Irish Corporal stumping for Freedom--Black Charlie's
+Compliments to his Master--Western Virginia at the Head of a Black
+Regiment,                                                               313
+
+
+
+
+RED-TAPE
+
+AND
+
+PIGEON-HOLE GENERALS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+_The Advent of our General of Division--Camp near Frederick City,
+Maryland--The Old Revolutionary Barracks at Frederick--An Irish
+Corporal's Recollections of the First Regiment of Volunteers from
+Pennsylvania--Punishment in the Old First._
+
+
+"Our new Division-General, boys!" exclaimed a sergeant of the 210th
+Pennsylvania Volunteers, whose attention and head were turned at the
+clatter of horses' hoofs to the rear. "I heard an officer say that he
+would be along to-day, and I recognise his description."
+
+The men, although weary and route-worn, straightened up, dressed their
+ranks, and as the General and Staff rode past, some enthusiastic soldier
+proposed cheers for our new Commander. They started with a will, but the
+General's doubtful look, as interpreted by the men, gave little or no
+encouragement, and the effort ended in a few ragged discordant yells.
+
+"He is a strange-looking old covey any how," said one of the boys in an
+undertone. "Did you notice that red muffler about his neck, and how
+pinched up and crooked his hat is, and that odd-looking moustache, and
+how savagely he cocks his eyes through his spectacles?"
+
+"They say," replied the sergeant, "that we are the first troops that he
+has commanded. He was a staff officer before in the Topographical Corps.
+Didn't you notice the T.C. on his coat buttons?"
+
+"And is he going to practise upon us?" blurts out a bustling red-faced
+little Irish corporal. "Be Jabers, that accounts for the crooked cow
+road we have marched through the last day--miles out of the way, and
+niver a chance for coffee."
+
+"You are too fast, Terence," said the sergeant; "if he belongs to the
+Topographical Corps, he ought at least to know the roads."
+
+"And didn't you say not two hours ago that we were entirely out of the
+way, and that we had been wandering as crooked as the creek that flows
+back of the old town we are from, and nearly runs through itself in a
+dozen places?"
+
+The sergeant admitted that he had said so, but stated that perhaps the
+General was not to blame, and added somewhat jocosely: "At any rate the
+winding of the creek makes those beautiful walks we have so much enjoyed
+in summer evenings."
+
+"Beautiful winding walks! is it, sergeant! Shure and whin you have your
+forty pound wait upon your back, forty rounds of lead and powdher in
+your cartridge-box, and twenty more in your pocket, three days' rations
+in your haversack, a musket on your shoulder, and army brogans on your
+throtters, you are just about the first man that I know of to take
+straight cuts."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a close warm day near the middle of September. The roads were
+dusty and the troops exhausted. Two days previously the brigade to which
+they belonged had left the pleasantest of camps, called "Camp Whipple"
+in honor of their former and favorite Division Commander. Situated in an
+orchard on the level brow of a hill that overlooked Washington, the
+imposing Capitol, the broad expanse of the Potomac dotted with frequent
+craft, the many national buildings, and scenery of historic interest,
+the men left it with regret, but carried with them recollections that
+often in times of future depression revived their patriotic ardor.
+
+Over dusty roads, through the muddy aqueduct of the Chesapeake and Ohio
+Canal, hurried on over the roughly paved streets of Georgetown, and
+through the suburbs of Washington, they finally halted for the night,
+and, as it chanced through lack of orders, for the succeeding day also,
+near Meridian Hill. Under orders to join the Fifth Army Corps commanded
+by Major-General Fitz John Porter, to which the Division had been
+previously assigned, the march was resumed on the succeeding day, which
+happened to be Sunday, and in the afternoon of which our chapter opens.
+
+A march of another day brought the Brigade to a recent Rebel camp
+ground. Traces of their occupancy were found not only in their
+depredations in the neighborhood destructive of railroad bridges, but
+also in letters and wall-paper envelopes adorned with the lantern-jawed
+phiz of Jefferson Davis. The latter were sought after with avidity as
+soon as ranks were broken and tents pitched; the more eagerly perhaps
+for the reason that during the greater part of their previous month of
+service they had been frequently within sound of rebel cannon, although
+but once under their fire. During the previous day, in fact, they had
+marched to the music of the artillery of South Mountain.
+
+That night awakened lively recollections in the mind of Terence McCarty,
+our lively little Irish corporal. His duty for the time as corporal of a
+relief gave him ample opportunity to indulge them. He had belonged to
+the old First Pennsylvania Regiment of three months men, that a little
+over a year before, when Maryland was halting between loyalty and
+disloyalty, had spent its happiest week of service in the yard of the
+revolutionary barracks in the city of Frederick. Terence was but two
+short miles from the spot. Brimfull of the memories, he turned to a
+comrade, who had also belonged to the First, and who with others chanced
+to stand near.
+
+"I say, Jack! Do you recollect the ould First and Frederick, and do you
+know that we are but two miles and short ones at that from the blissed
+ould white-washed barracks, full of all kind of quare guns and canteens
+looking like barrels cut down; and the Parade Ground where our ould
+Colonel used to come his 'Briskly, men! Briskly,' when he'd put us
+through the manual, and where so many ladies would come to see our
+ivolutions, and where they set the big table for us on the Fourth, and
+where--"
+
+"Hold on, corporal! you can't give that week's history to-night."
+
+"I was only going to obsarve, Jack, that I feel like a badly used man."
+
+"How so, Terence?"
+
+"Why you see nearly ivery officer, commissioned and non-commissioned, of
+the ould First has been promoted. The Colonel was too ould for service,
+or my head on it, he would have had a star. Just look at the captains
+by way of sample--Company A, a Lieutenant-Colonel, expecting and
+desarving an eagle ivery day; Company B, a Lieutenant-Colonel; Company
+C, our own Lieutenant-Colonel; Company D, a Brigadier for soldierly
+looks, daring, and dash; Company E, a Captain in an aisy berth in the
+regular service; Company F, a Colonel; Company G, a Major; Company H, a
+Lieutenant-Colonel; Company I, I have lost sight of, and the
+lion-hearted captain of Company K, doing a lion's share of work at the
+head of a regiment in Tennessee. Now, Jack, the under officers and many
+privates run pretty much the same way, but not quite as high. Bad luck
+to me, I was fifth corporal thin and am eighth now--promoted
+crab-fashion. Fortune's wheel gives me many a turn, Jack! but always
+stops with me on the lower side."
+
+"I saw you on the upper side once," retorted Jack roguishly.
+
+"And whin? may I ask."
+
+"When, do you say? why, when you took about half a canteen too much, and
+that same old colonel had you tied on the upper side of a barrel on the
+green in front of the barracks."
+
+"Bad luck to an ill-natured memory, Jack, for stirring that up," replied
+the corporal, breaking in upon the laughter that followed, "but I now
+recollect, it was the day before you slipped the guard whin the colonel
+gave you a barrel uniform with your head through the end, and kept me
+for two mortal long hours in the hot sun, a tickling of you under the
+nose with a straw, and daubing molasses on your chaps to plaze the
+flies, to the great admiration of a big crowd of ladies and gentlemen."
+
+Jack subsided, and the hearty laughter at the corporal's ready retort
+was broken a few minutes later by a loud call for the corporal of the
+guard, which hurried Terence away, dispersed the crowd, and might as
+well end this chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+_The Treason at Harper's Ferry--Rebel Occupation of
+Frederick--Patriotism of the Ladies of Frederick--A Rebel Guard
+nonplussed by a Lady--The Approach to Antietam--Our Brigadier cuts Red
+Tape--The Blunder of the day after Antietam--The little Irish Corporal's
+idea of Strategy._
+
+
+The Brigade did not rest long in its new camp. The day and a half,
+however, passed there had many incidents to be remembered by. Fish were
+caught in abundance from the beautiful Monocacy. But the most impressive
+scene was the long procession of disarmed, dejected men, who had been
+basely surrendered at Harper's Ferry, and were now on their way
+homeward, on parole. Many and deep were the curses they uttered against
+their late commanders. "Boys, _we've_ been sold! Look out," cried a
+comely bright-eyed young officer of eighteen or thereabouts. "That we
+have," added a chaplain, who literally bore the cross upon his shoulders
+in a pair of elegant straps. When will earnest men cease to be foiled in
+this war by treacherous commanders? was an inquiry that pressed itself
+anxiously home.
+
+But the thunders of Antietam were reverberating through that mountainous
+region, distinctly heard in all their many echoes, and of course the
+all-absorbing topic. At 3 P. M. orders came to move a short distance
+beyond Frederick. The division was rapidly formed, and the men marched
+joyously along through the streets of Frederick, already crowded with
+our own and Rebel wounded, to the sound of lively martial music; but
+none more joyously than the members of the old First, whose
+recollections were brisk of good living as they recognised in many a
+lady a former benefactress. Bradley T. Johnson's race, that commenced
+with his infamously prepared and lying handbills, was soon run in
+Frederick. No one of the border cities has been more undoubtedly or
+devotedly patriotic. Its prominent ministers at an early day took bold
+positions. The ladies were not behind, and many a sick and wounded
+soldier will bless them to his latest hour. The world has heard of the
+well deserved fame of Florence Nightingale. History will hold up to a
+nation's gratitude thousands of such ministering angels, who, moving in
+humbler circles, perhaps, are none the less entitled to a nation's
+praise. "Great will be their reward."
+
+To show the spirit that emboldened the ladies of Frederick, a notable
+instance is related as having occurred during the Rebel occupation of
+the city under General Stuart. Many Union ladies had left the place. Not
+so, however, with Mrs. D., the lively, witty, and accomplished wife of a
+prominent Lutheran minister. The Union sick and wounded that remained
+demanded attention, and for their sake, as well as from her own high
+spirit, she resolved to stay. Miss Annie C., the beautiful and talented
+daughter of Ex-U. S. Senator C., an intimate friend of Mrs. D., through
+like devotion, also remained. Rebel officers, gorgeous in grey and gilt
+lace, many of them old residents of the place, strutted about the
+streets. The ragged privates begged from door to door. Mrs. D., and her
+friend had been separated several days--a long period considering their
+close intimacy and their present surroundings. Mrs. D. resolved to visit
+her, and with her to resolve was to execute. Threading her way through
+the crowded streets, heeding not the jeers or insults of the rebel
+soldiery, she soon came in front of the Cooper Mansion, to find a rebel
+flag floating from an upper window, and a well dressed soldierly looking
+greyback, with bayonet fixed, pacing his beat in front. Nothing daunted,
+Mrs. D. approached. "Halt," was the short sharp hail of the sentinel, as
+he brought his bayonet to the charge. "Who is quartered here?" asked
+Mrs. D., gradually nearing the sentry. "Maj.-Gen. Stuart," was the brief
+reply, "I want to visit a lady acquaintance in the house." "My orders
+are strict, madam, that no one can cross my beat without a pass." "_Pass
+or no pass, I must and will go into that house_," and quick as thought
+this frail lady dashed aside the bayonet, sprang across the beat, and
+entered the hall, while the sentry confused, uncertain whether he should
+follow or not, stood a minute or two before resuming his step. From an
+upper window Gen. Stuart laughed heartily at the scene, and was loud in
+praise of her tact and pluck.
+
+But all this time our division has been moving through the streets of
+Frederick, in fact has reached what was to have been its camping ground
+for the night. The reader will excuse me; older heads and more exact
+pens have frequently, when ladies intervened, made much longer
+digressions.
+
+The halt was but for a moment. An aide-de-camp, weary-looking, on a
+horse covered with foam, dashed up to the division commander, bearing an
+order from the commander-in-chief that the division must join its corps
+at Antietam without delay. The fight might be renewed in the morning,
+and if so, fresh troops were needed. The order was communicated through
+the brigade commanders to commanders of regiments, while the subordinate
+field officers went from company to company encouraging the men, telling
+them that a glorious victory had been gained, that the rebels were
+hemmed in by the river on three sides, and our army in front; that there
+was but one ford, and that a poor one, and that the rebels must either
+take to the river indiscriminately, be cut to pieces, or surrender. In
+short, that we had them.
+
+These statements were received with the most enthusiastic applause. As
+the Division proceeded on its march, they were confirmed by reports of
+spectators and wounded men in ambulances. What was the most significant
+fact to the men who had seen the thousands of stragglers and skulkers
+from the second battle of Bull Run, was the entire absence of straggling
+or demoralization of any kind. Our troops must have been victorious, was
+the ready and natural suggestion. The thought nerved them, and pushing
+up their knapsacks, and hitching up their pantaloons, they trudged with
+a will up the mountain slope.
+
+That mountain slope!--it would well repay a visit from one of our large
+cities, to descend that mountain a bright summer afternoon. A sudden
+turn in the road brings to view the sun-gilded spires of the city of
+Frederick, rising as if by enchantment from one of the loveliest of
+valleys. Many of the descriptions of foreign scenery pale before the
+realities of this view. When will our Hawthornes and our Taylors be just
+to the land of their birth?
+
+Scenery on that misty night could not delay the troops. The mountain-top
+was gained. About half way down the northern slope of the mountain the
+Division halted to obtain the benefits of a spring fifty yards from the
+road. A steep path led to it, and one by one the men filed down to fill
+their canteens. The delay was terribly tedious, and entirely
+unnecessary, as five minutes' inquiry among the men, many of whom were
+familiar with the road, would have informed the Commanding General of
+abundance of excellent water, a short mile beyond, and close by the
+wayside. Pride, which prevails to an unwarranted extent among too many
+regular officers, is frequently the cause of much vexation. Inquiry and
+exertion to lighten the labors of our brave volunteers would, with every
+earnest officer, be unceasing. A short distance further a halt was
+ordered for coffee, that "sublime beverage of Mocha," indispensable in
+camp or in the field. Strange to say, our brigadier, who habitually
+confined himself closely to cold water, was one of the most particular
+of officers in ordering halts for coffee.
+
+South Mountain was crossed, but in the dusky light little could be seen
+of the devastation caused by the late battle. "Yonder," said a wounded
+man who chanced to be passing, "our gallant General lost his life." The
+brave, accomplished Reno! How dearly our national integrity is
+maintained! Brave spirit, in your life you thought it well worth the
+cost; your death can never be considered a vain sacrifice!
+
+Boonsboro' was entered about day-break. The road to Sharpsburg was here
+taken, and at 7-1/2 A. M., having marched during that night twenty-eight
+miles, the Division stood at arms near the battle-ground along a road
+crowded with ammunition trains. Inquiry was made as to the ammunition,
+and the number of rounds for each man ordered to be increased
+immediately from forty to sixty.
+
+"Pioneer! hand me that axe," said our brigadier, dismounting.
+"Sergeant," addressing the sergeant of the ammunition guard, "hand out
+those boxes." "The Division General has given strict orders, if you
+please, General, that the boxes must pass regularly through the hands of
+the ordnance officer," said the sergeant, saluting. "I am _acting_
+ordnance officer; hand out the boxes!" was the command, that from its
+tone and manner brooked no delay. A box was at his feet. In an instant a
+clever blow from the muscular arm of the hero of Winchester laid it
+open. Another and another, until the orderly sergeant had given the
+required number of rounds to every man in the brigade. "Attention!
+Column! Shoulder Arms! Right Face! Right Shoulder Shift Arms!" and at a
+quickstep the brigade moved towards the field.
+
+After passing long trains of ambulances and ammunition wagons, the boys
+were saluted as they passed through the little town of Keetysville by
+exhortations from the wounded, who crowded every house, and forgot their
+wounds in their enthusiasm. "Fellows, you've got 'em! Give 'em h--l!"
+yelled an artillery sergeant, for whom a flesh wound in the arm was
+being dressed at the window by a kind-hearted looking country woman.
+"Give it to 'em!" "They're fast!" "This good lady knows every foot of
+the ground, and says so." The good lady smiled assent, and was saluted
+with cheer upon cheer. Dead horses, a few unburied men, marks of shot in
+the buildings, now told of immediate proximity to the field. A short
+distance further, and the Division was drawn up in line of battle,
+behind one of the singular ridges that mark this memorable ground.
+Fragments of shells, haversacks, knapsacks, and the like, told how hotly
+the ground had been contested on the previous day. The order to load
+was quickly obeyed, and the troops, with the remainder of the Fifth
+Corps in their immediate neighborhood, stood to arms.
+
+A large number of officers lined the crest of the ridge, and thither,
+with leave, the Colonel and Lieut.-Colonel of the 210th repaired. The
+scene that met their view was grand beyond description. Another somewhat
+higher and more uniform ridge, running almost parallel to the ridge or
+rather connected series of ridges on one of which the officers stood,
+was the strong position held by the rebels on the previous day. Between
+the ridges flowed the sluggish Antietam, dammed up for milling purposes.
+Beyond, on the crest of the hill, gradually giving way, were the rebel
+skirmishers; our own were as gradually creeping up the slope. The
+skirmishers were well deployed upon both sides; and the parallel flashes
+and continuous rattle of their rifles gave an interest to the scene,
+ineffaceable in the minds of spectators.
+
+"Do you hear that shell, you can see the smoke just this side of
+Sharpsburg on our left," said the Colonel, addressing his companion.
+"There it bursts," and a puff of white smoke expanded itself in the air
+fifty yards above one of our batteries posted on a ridge on the left.
+Two pieces gave quick reply. "Officers, to your posts," shouted an
+aide-de-camp, and forthwith the officers galloped to their respective
+commands.
+
+"Boys, the ball is about to open, put your best foot foremost," said the
+Colonel to his regiment. The men, excited, supposing themselves about to
+pass their first ordeal of battle, straightened up, held their pieces
+with tightened grips, and nervously awaited the "forward." Beyond the
+sharp crack of the rifles, however, no further sound was heard. Hour
+after hour passed. At length an aide from the staff of the Division
+General cantered to where the Brigadier, conversing with several of his
+field officers, stood, and informed him that it was the pleasure of the
+Division General that the men should be made comfortable, _as no
+immediate attack was apprehended_. "No immediate attack apprehended!"
+echoed the Colonel. "Of course not. Why don't we attack them?"
+
+The aide flushed, said somewhat excitedly: "That was the order I
+received, sir."
+
+"Boys, cook your coffee," said our Brigadier, somewhat mechanically--a
+brown study pictured in his face.
+
+The field officers scattered to relieve their hunger, or rather their
+anxiety as to the programme of the day.
+
+"Charlie," said the Lieut.-Col., addressing a good-humored looking
+Contraband, "get our coffee ready."
+
+The Colonel, with the other field and staff officers, seated themselves
+upon knapsacks unslung for their accommodation, silently, each
+apparently waiting upon the other to open the conversation. In the
+meantime several company officers who had heard of the order gathered
+about them.
+
+"I don't understand this move at all," at length said the Colonel
+nervously. "Here we are, with a reserve of thirty thousand men who have
+not been in the fight at all, with ammunition untouched, perfectly fresh
+and eager for the move. The troops that were engaged yesterday have for
+the most part had a good night's rest and are ready and anxious for a
+brush to-day. The rebels, hemmed in on three sides by the river--with a
+miserable ford, and that only in one place, as every body knows, and as
+there is no earthly excuse for our generals not knowing, as this ground
+was canvassed often enough in the three months' service. Why don't we
+advance?" continued the Colonel, rising. "Their sharpshooters are near
+the woods now, and when they reach it, they'll run like Devils. Why
+don't we advance? We can drive them into the river, if they like that
+better than being shelled; or they can surrender, which they would
+prefer to either. And as to force, I'll bet we have one third more."
+
+The Colonel, an impressive, fine-looking man, six feet clear in his
+socks, of thirty-eight or thereabouts, delivered the above with more
+than his usual earnestness.
+
+The Adjutant, of old Berks by birth, rather short in stature, thick-set,
+with a mathematically developed head, was the first to rejoin.
+
+"It can't be for want of ammunition, Colonel! This corps has plenty. An
+officer in a corps engaged yesterday told me that they had enough, and
+you all saw the hundreds of loaded ammunition wagons that we passed in
+the road close at hand--and besides, what excuse can there be? The Rebs
+I understand did not get much available ammunition at the ferry. They
+are far from their base of supplies, while we are scant fifteen miles
+from one railroad, and twenty-eight from another, and good roads to
+both."
+
+"Be easy," said the Major, a fine specimen of manhood, six feet two and
+a half clear of his boots, an Irishman by birth, the brogue, however, if
+he ever had any, lost by an early residence in this country. "Be easy.
+Little Mac is a safe commander. We tried him, Colonel, in the Peninsula,
+and I'll wager my pay and allowances, and God knows I need them, that
+he'll have his army safe."
+
+"Yes, and the Rebel army too," snappishly interrupted the Colonel.
+
+"I have always thought," said the Lieut.-Col., "that the test of a great
+commander was his ability to follow up and take advantage of a victory.
+One thousand men from the ranks would bear that test triumphantly
+to-day. It is a wonder that our Union men stiffened in yesterday's
+fight, whose blue jackets we can see from yonder summit in the rear of
+our sharpshooters, do not rise from the dead, and curse the halting
+imbecility that is making their heroic struggles, and glorious deaths,
+seemingly vain sacrifices."
+
+"Too hard, Colonel, too hard," says the Major.
+
+"Too hard! when results are developing before our eyes, so that every
+servant, even, in the regiment can read them. Mark my word for it,
+Major; Lee commenced crossing last evening, and by the time we creep to
+the river at five hundred yards a day, if at all, indeed, he will have
+his army over, horse, foot, and dragoons, and leave us the muskets on
+the field, the dead to bury, farm-houses full of Rebel wounded to take
+care of, and the battle-ground to encamp upon--a victory barely worth
+the cost. Why not advance, as the Col. says. The worst they can do in
+any event is to put us upon the defensive, and they can't drive us from
+this ground."
+
+"If old Rosecranz was only here," sang out a Captain, who had been
+itching for his say, and who had seen service in Western Virginia, "he
+wouldn't let them pull their pantaloons and shirts off and swim across,
+or wade it as if they were going out a bobbing for eels. When I was in
+Western Virginia----"
+
+"If fighting old Joe Hooker could only take his saddle to-day," chimed
+in an enthusiastic company officer, completely cutting off the Captain,
+"he'd go in on his own hook."
+
+"And it would be," sang out a beardless and thoughtless Lieutenant--
+
+          "Old Joe, kicking up ahind and afore
+          And the Butternuts a caving in, around old Joe."
+
+The apt old song might have given the Lieutenant a little credit at any
+other time, but the matter in hand was too provokingly serious. Coffee
+and crackers were announced, the field officers commenced their meal in
+silence, and the company officers returned to their respective quarters.
+
+The troops rested on their arms all that afternoon, at times lounging
+close to the stacks. Upon the face of every reflecting officer and
+private, deep mortification was depicted. It did not compare, however,
+with the chagrin manifested by the Volunteer Regiments who had been
+engaged in the fight, and whose thinned ranks and comrades lost made
+them closely calculate consequences. Not last among the reflecting class
+was our little Irish corporal.
+
+"Gineral," said he, advancing cap in hand, to our always accessible
+Brigadier, as he sat leisurely upon his bay--"Gineral! will you permit a
+corporal, and an Irishman at that, to spake a word to ye?"
+
+"Certainly, corporal!" the fine open countenance of the General relaxing
+into a smile.
+
+"Gineral! didn't we beat the Rebs yesterday?"
+
+"So they say, corporal."
+
+"Don't the river surround them, and can they cross at more than one
+place, and that a bad one, as an ould woman whose pig I saved to-day
+tould me?"
+
+"The river is on their three sides, and they have only one ford, and
+that a bad one, corporal."
+
+"Thin why the Divil don't we charge?"
+
+"Corporal!" said the General, laughing, "I am not in command of the
+army, and can't say."
+
+"Bad luck to our stars that ye aren't, Gineral! there would be somebody
+hurt to-day thin, and it would be the bluidy Butthernuts, I'm thinking."
+The corporal gave this ready compliment as only an Irishman can, and
+withdrew.
+
+At dusk orders were received for the men to sleep by their arms. But
+there was no sleep to many an eye until a late hour that night. Never
+while life lasts will survivors forget the exciting conversations of
+that day and night. "Tired nature," however, claimed her dues, and one
+by one, officers and privates at late hours betook themselves to their
+blankets. The stars, undisturbed by struggles on this little planet,
+were gazed at by many a wakeful eye. Those same stars will look down as
+placidly upon the future faithful historian, whose duty it will be to
+place first in the list of cold, costly military mistakes, the blunder
+of the day after the battle of Antietam.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+_The March to the River--Our Citizen Soldiery--Popularity of Commanders
+how Lost and how Won--The Rebel Dead--How the Rebels repay Courtesy._
+
+
+An early call to arms was sounded upon the succeeding morning, and the
+Division rapidly formed. The batteries that had been posted at
+commanding points upon the series of ridges during the previous day and
+night were withdrawn, and the whole Corps moved along a narrow road,
+that wound beautifully among the ridges.
+
+The Volunteer Regiments were unusually quiet; the thoughts of the night
+previous evidently lingered with them. The American Volunteer is no mere
+machine. Rigorous discipline will give him soldierly
+characteristics--teach him that unity of action with his comrades and
+implicit obedience of orders are essential to success. But his
+independence of thought remains; he never forgets that he is a citizen
+soldier; he reads and reflects for himself. Few observant officers of
+volunteers but have noticed that affairs of national polity, movements
+of military commanders, are not unfrequently discussed by men in
+blouses, about camp fires and picket stations, with as much practical
+ability and certainly quite as courteously, as in halls where
+legislators canvass them at a nation's cost. It has been justly
+remarked that in no army in the world is the average standard of
+intelligence so high, as in the American volunteer force. The same
+observation might be extended to earnestness of purpose and honesty of
+intention. The doctrine has long since been exploded that scoundrels
+make the best soldiers. Men of no character under discipline will fight,
+but they fight mechanically. The determination so necessary to success
+is wanting. European serfs trained with the precision of puppets, and
+like puppets unthinking, are wanting in the dash that characterizes our
+volunteers. That creature of impulse the Frenchman, under all that is
+left of the first Napoleon, the shadow of a mighty name, will charge
+with desperation, but fails in the cool and quiet courage so essential
+in seeming forlorn resistance. In what other nation can you combine the
+elements of the American volunteer? It may be said that the British
+Volunteer Rifle Corps would prove a force of similar character. In many
+respects undoubtedly they would; as yet there is no basis of comparison.
+Their soldierly attainments have not been tested by the realities of
+war.
+
+There was ample food for reflection. On the neighboring hills heavy
+details of soldiers were gathering the rebel dead in piles preparatory
+to committing them to the trenches, at which details equally heavy,
+vigorously plied the pick and spade. Our own dead, with few exceptions,
+had already been buried; and the long rows of graves marked by head and
+foot boards, placed by the kind hands of comrades, attested but too
+sadly how heavily we had peopled the ridges.
+
+While the troops were _en route_, the Commander-in-Chief in his hack and
+four, followed by a staff imposing in numbers, passed. The Regulars
+cheered vociferously. The applause from the Volunteers was brief,
+faint, and a most uncertain sound, and yet many of these same Volunteer
+Regiments were rapturous in applause, previous to and during the battle.
+Attachment to Commanders so customary among old troops--so desirable in
+strengthening the morale of the army--cannot blind the intelligent
+soldier to a grave mistake--a mistake that makes individual effort
+contemptible. True, a great European Commander has said that soldiers
+will become attached to any General; a remark true of the times
+perhaps--true of the troops of that day,--but far from being true of
+volunteers, who are in the field from what they consider the necessity
+of the country, and whose souls are bent upon a speedy, honorable, and
+victorious termination of the war.
+
+A glance at the manner in which our Volunteer Regiments are most
+frequently formed, will, perhaps, best illustrate this. A town meeting
+is called, speeches made appealing to the patriotic, to respond to the
+necessities of the country; lists opened and the names of mechanics,
+young attorneys, clerks, merchants, farmers' sons, dry-goods-men and
+their clerks, and others of different pursuits, follow each other in
+strange succession, but with like earnestness of purpose. An intelligent
+soldiery gathered in this way, will not let attachments to men blind
+them as to the effects of measures.
+
+About 10 A. M., our brigade was drawn up in line of battle on a ridge
+overlooking the well riddled little town of Sharpsburg. Arms were
+stacked, and privilege given many officers and men to examine the
+adjacent ground. A cornfield upon our right, along which upon the north
+side ran a narrow farm road, that long use had sunk to a level of two
+and in most places three feet, below the surface of the fields, had been
+contested with unusual fierceness. Blue and grey lay literally with
+arms entwined as they fell in hand to hand contest. The fence rails had
+been piled upon the north side of the road, and in the rifle pit formed
+to their hand with this additional bulwark, they poured the most galling
+of fires with comparative impunity upon our troops advancing to the
+charge. A Union battery, however, came to the rescue, and an enfilading
+fire of but a few moments made havoc unparalleled. Along the whole line
+of rebel occupation, their bodies could have been walked upon, so
+closely did they lie. Pale-faced, finely featured boys of sixteen, their
+delicate hands showing no signs of toil, hurried by a misguided
+enthusiasm from fond friends and luxurious family firesides, contrasted
+strangely with the long black hair, lank looks of the Louisiana Tiger,
+or the rough, bloated, and bearded face of the Backwoodsman of Texas. A
+Brigadier, who looked like an honest, substantial planter, lay half over
+the rails, upon which he had doubtless stood encouraging his men, while
+lying half upon his body were two beardless boys, members of his staff,
+and not unlikely of his family. Perhaps all the male members of that
+family had been hurried at once from life by that single shell. The
+sight was sickening. Who, if privileged, would be willing to fix a limit
+to God's retributive justice upon the heads of the infamous, and in many
+instances cowardly originators of this Rebellion!
+
+Cavalry scouting parties brought back the word that the country to the
+river was clear of the rebels, and in accordance with what seemed to be
+the prevailing policy of the master-mind of the campaign, immediate
+orders to move were then issued. The troops marched through that village
+of hospitals,--Sharpsburg--and halted within a mile and a half of the
+river, in the rear of a brick dwelling, which was then taken and
+subsequently used as the Head-Quarters of Major-General Fitz John
+Porter. A line of battle was again formed, arms stacked, and an order
+issued that the ground would be occupied during the night.
+
+In the morning the march was again resumed by a road which wound around
+the horseshoe-shaped bend in the river. When approaching the river,
+firing was heard, apparently as if from the other side, and a short
+distance further details were observed carrying wounded men and ranging
+them comfortably around the many hay and straw stacks of the
+neighborhood. Inquiry revealed that a reconnoitring party, misled by the
+apparent quiet of the other side, had crossed, fallen into an ambuscade,
+and under the most galling of fires, artillery and musketry, kept up
+most unmercifully by the advancing rebels, who thus ungraciously repaid
+the courtesy shown them the day after Antietam--had been compelled to
+recross that most difficult ford. Our loss was frightful--one new and
+most promising regiment was almost entirely destroyed.
+
+The men thought of the dead earnestness of the rebels, and as they moved
+forward around the winding Potomac--deep, full of shelving, sunken
+rocks, from the dam a short distance above the ford, that formerly fed
+the mill owned by a once favorably known Congressman, A. R. Boteler, to
+where it was touched by our line--they reviewed with redoubled force,
+the helplessness of the rebels a few days previously, and to say the
+least, the carelessness of the leader of the Union army.
+
+The regimental camp was selected in a fine little valley that narrowed
+into a gap between the bluffs, bordering upon the canal, sheltered by
+wood, and having every convenience of water. The rebels had used it but
+a few days previously, and the necessity was immediate for heavy details
+for police duty. And here we passed quite unexpectedly six weeks of days
+more pleasant to the men than profitable to the country, and of which
+something may be said in our two succeeding chapters.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+_A Regimental Baker--Hot Pies--Position of the Baker in line of
+Battle--Troubles of the Baker--A Western Virginia Captain on a Whiskey
+Scent--The Baker's Story--How to obtain Political Influence--Dancing
+Attendance at Washington--What Simon says--Confiscation of Whiskey._
+
+
+Besides the indispensables of quartermaster and sutler the 210th had
+what might be considered a luxury in the shape of a baker, who had
+volunteered to accompany the regiment, and furnish hot cakes, bread, and
+pies. Tom Hudson was an original in his way, rather short of stature,
+far plumper and more savory-looking than one of his pies, with a
+pleasing countenance and twinkling black eye, that meant humor or
+roguishness as circumstances might demand, and a never-ending supply of
+what is always popular, dry humor. He was just the man to manage the
+thousand caprices of appetite of a thousand different men. While in
+camps accessible to the cities of Washington and Alexandria, matters
+moved smoothly enough. His zinc-plated bakery was always kept fired up,
+and a constant supply of hot pies dealt out to the long strings of men,
+who would stand for hours anxiously awaiting their turn. A movement of
+the baker's interpreted differently by himself and the men, at one time
+created considerable talk and no little feeling. On several occasions
+the trays were lifted out of the oven, and the pies dashed upon the
+out-spread expectant hands, with such force as to break the too often
+half-baked undercrust. In consequence the juices would ooze out, trickle
+scalding hot between the fingers, and compel the helpless man to drop
+the pie. One unfortunate fellow lost four pies in succession. As they
+cost fifteen cents apiece, the pocket was too much interested to let the
+matter escape notice. A non-commissioned officer, who had lost a pie,
+savagely returned to the stand, and demanded another pie or his money.
+The baker was much too shrewd for that. The precedent, if set, would
+well nigh exhaust his stock of pies, and impoverish his cash drawer.
+
+"I say," said the officer, turning to the men, "it is a trick. He wants
+to sell as many pies as he can. He knows well enough that when one falls
+in this mud fifteen cents are gone slap."
+
+"Now, boys," said the baker blandly, "you know me better than that. I'd
+scorn to do an act of that kind for fifteen cents. You know how it
+is--what a rush there always is here. You want the pies as soon as
+baked, and baking makes them hot. Now I want to accommodate you all as
+soon as possible, and of course I serve them out as soon as baked. You
+had better all get tin-plates or boards."
+
+"That won't go down, old fellow," retorted the officer. "You know that
+there is hardly a tin-plate in camp, and boards are not to be had."
+
+A wink from the baker took the officer to the private passage in the
+rear of his tent. What happened there is known but to the two, but ever
+after the officer held his peace. Not so with the men. However, as the
+pies were not dealt out as hot in future, the matter gradually passed
+from their minds.
+
+To make himself popular with the men, Tom resorted to a variety of
+expedients, one of which was to assure them that in case of an
+enterprise that promised danger, he would be with them. He was taken up
+quite unexpectedly. An ammunition train on the morning of the second
+battle of Bull Run, bound to the field, required a convoy. The regiment
+was detailed. Tom's assertions had come to the ears of the regimental
+officers, and without being consulted, he was provided with a horse, and
+told to keep near the Adjutant. There was a drizzling rain all day long,
+but through it came continually the booming of heavy ordnance.
+
+"Colonel! how far do you suppose that firing is?" "And are they Rebel
+cannon?" were frequent inquiries made by Tom during the day. About noon
+he asserted that he could positively ride no further. But ride he must
+and ride he did. The Regiment halted near Centreville, having passed
+Porter's Corps on the way and convoyed the Train to the required point.
+After a short halt the homeward route was taken and Tom placed in the
+rear. By some accident, frequent when trains take up the road, he became
+separated from the Regiment and lost among the teams. The Regiment moved
+on, and as it was now growing dark, turned into a wood about half a mile
+distant, for the night. Tom had just learned his route, when "ping!"
+came a shell from a Rebel battery on a hill to the left, exploded among
+some team horses, and created awful confusion. He suddenly forgot his
+soreness, and putting spurs to his horse at a John Gilpin speed, rode
+by, through and over, as he afterwards said, the teams. The shells flew
+rapidly. Tom dodged as if every one was scorching his hair, at the same
+time giving a vigorous kick to the rear with both heels. At his speed
+he was soon by the teams; in fact did not stop until he was ten Virginia
+miles from that scene of terror. But we will meet him again in the
+morning.
+
+The Regiment was soon shelled out of the wood, and compelled to continue
+its march. Three miles further they encamped in a meadow, passed a wet
+night without shelter, and early next morning were again upon the road.
+Thousands of stragglers lined the way, living upon rations plundered
+from broken-down baggage wagons--lounging lazily around fires that were
+kept in good glow by rails from the fences near which they were built.
+The preceding day these stragglers and skulkers were met in squads at
+every step of the road. At a point sufficiently remote from danger,
+their camps commenced. In one of these camps, situated in a fence
+corner, the baker was espied, stretched at full length and fast asleep,
+upon two rails placed at a gentle slope at right angles to the fence.
+Surrounding him were filthy, mean-looking representatives of
+half-a-dozen various regiments--the Zouave more gay than gallant in
+flaming red breeches--blouses, dress coats, and even a pair of shoulder
+straps, assisted to complete the crowd. Near by was tied his jaded
+horse.
+
+The baker was awakened. To his surprise, as he said, he saw the
+regiment, as he had supposed them to be much nearer home than himself.
+One of his graceless comrades, however, bluntly contradicted this, and
+accused him of being mortally frightened when he halted the night
+before, as although they assured him that he was full ten miles from
+danger, he insisted that these rifled guns had terribly long range. The
+baker remonstrated, and quietly resumed his place by the Adjutant and
+Colonel.
+
+"I have been thinking, Colonel," said he, in the course of a half hour,
+riding alongside of the Colonel, and speaking in an undertone, "that I
+ran a great risk unnecessarily."
+
+"Why?" asked the Colonel.
+
+"You see my exhortations are worth far more to the men than my example.
+When they crowd my quarters, as they do every morning, I never fail to
+deal out patriotic precepts with my pies."
+
+"But particularly the pies," retorted the Colonel.
+
+"That is another branch of my case," slily continued the baker.
+"Suppose, if such a calamity can be dwelt upon, that I had been killed,
+and there was only one mule between me and death, who would have run my
+bakery? who," elevating his voice, "would have furnished hot rolls for
+the officers, and warm bread cakes and pies for the men? Riding along
+last night, these matters were all duly reflected upon, and I wound up,
+by deciding that the regiment could not afford to lose me."
+
+"But you managed to lose the regiment," replied the Colonel.
+
+"Pure accident that, I assure you, upon honor. Now in line of battle I
+have taken pains to ascertain my true position, but this confounded
+marching by the flank puts me out of sorts. In line of battle the
+quartermaster says he is four miles in the rear--the sutler says that he
+is four miles behind the quartermaster, and as it would look singular
+upon paper to shorten the distance for the baker, besides other good
+reasons, I suppose I am four miles behind the sutler."
+
+"Completely out of range for all purposes," observed the Adjutant, who
+had slily listened with interest.
+
+"There is a good reason for that position, it is well chosen, and shows
+foresight," continued the baker, dropping his rein, and enforcing his
+remarks by apt gestures. "Suppose we are in line of battle, and the
+Rebels in line facing us at easy rifle range. Their prisoners say that
+they have lived for a month past on roasted corn and green apples. Now
+what will equal the daring of a hungry man! These Rebel Commanders are
+shrewd in keeping their men hungry; our men have heart for the fight, it
+is true, but the rebels have a stomach for it--they hunger for a chance
+at the spoils. The quartermaster then with his crackers, as they must
+not be needlessly inflamed, must be kept out of sight--the sutler, too,
+with his stores, must be kept shady--but above all the baker. Suppose
+the baker to be nearer," said he, with increased earnestness, "and a
+breeze should spring up towards their lines bearing with it the smell of
+warm bread, the rebels would rise instanter on tip-toe, snuff a
+minute--concentrate on the bakery, and no two ranks or columns doubled
+on the centre, could keep the hungry devils back. Our line pierced, we
+might lose the day--lose the day, sir."
+
+"And the baker," said the Major, joining in the laugh caused by his
+argument.
+
+Shortly after that march, matters went indifferently with the baker.
+Camp was changed frequently, and over the rough roads he kept up with
+difficulty.
+
+A week after the battle of Antietam, after satisfying himself fully of
+the departure of the Rebels, he arrived in camp. He had picked up by the
+way an ill-favored assistant, whose tent stood on the hill side some
+little distance from the right flank of the regiment.
+
+Two nights after his arrival there was a commotion in camp. A tonguey
+corporal, slightly under regulation size, in an exuberance of spirits,
+had mounted a cracker-box almost immediately in front of the sutler's
+tent, and commenced a lively harangue. He told how he had left a
+profitable grocery business to serve his country--his pecuniary
+sacrifices--but above all, the family he had left behind.
+
+"And you've blissed them by taking your characther with you," chimed in
+the little Irish corporal.
+
+"Where did you steal your whiskey?" demanded a second.
+
+The confusion increased, the crowd was dispersed by the guard, all at
+the expense of the sutler's credit, as it was rumored that he had
+furnished the stimulant.
+
+The sutler indignantly demanded an investigation, and three officers,
+presumed to possess a scent for whiskey above their fellows, were
+detailed for the duty. One of these was our friend the Virginia captain.
+
+Under penalty of losing his stripes, the corporal confessed that he had
+obtained the liquor at the baker's. Thither the following evening the
+detail repaired. The assistant denied all knowledge of the liquor. He
+was confronted with the corporal, and admitted the charge, and that but
+three bottles remained.
+
+"By ----," said our Western Virginia captain, hands in pocket, "I smell
+ten more. There are just thirteen bottles or I'll lose my straps."
+
+The confidence of the captain impressed the detail, and they went to
+work with a will--emptying barrels of crackers, probing with a bayonet
+sacks of flour, etc. A short search, to the pretended amazement of the
+assistant, proved the correctness of the captain's scent. The baker was
+sent for, and with indignant manner and hands lifted in holy horror, he
+poured volley after volley of invective at the confounded assistant.
+
+"But, gentlemen," said the baker, dropping his tone, "I've known worse
+things than this to happen. I've known even bakers to get tight."
+
+"And your bacon would have stood a better chance of being saved if you
+had got tight, instead of putting a non-commissioned officer in that
+condition," said one of the detail. "The Colonel, I am afraid, Tom, will
+clear you out."
+
+"Well," sighed the baker, after a pause of a moment, "talk about Job and
+all the other unfortunates since his day, why not one of them had my
+variety of suffering. Did you ever hear any of my misfortunes?"
+
+"We see one."
+
+"My life has been a series of mishaps. I prosper occasionally in small
+things, but totals knock me. God help me if I hadn't a sure port in a
+storm--a self-supporting wife. For instance--but I can't commence that
+story without relieving my thirst." A bottle was opened, drinks had all
+around, and the baker continued--
+
+"You see, gentlemen, when Simon was in political power, I waggled
+successfully and extensively among the coal mines in Central
+Pennsylvania. In those localities voters are kept underground until
+election day, and they then appear above often in such unexpected force
+as to knock the speculations of unsophisticated politicians. But Simon
+was not one of that stripe. He knew his men--the real men of influence;
+not men that have big reputations created by active but less widely
+known under-workers, but the under-workers themselves. Simon dealt with
+these, and he rarely mistook his men. Now I was well known in those
+parts--kept on the right side of the boys, and the boys tried to keep on
+the right side of me, and Simon knew it. No red tape fettered Simon, as
+the boys say it tied our generals the other side of Sharpsburg in order
+to let the Rebs have time to cross. If the measures that his shrewd
+foresight saw were necessary for the suppression of this Rebellion, at
+its outbreak, had been adopted, we would be encamped somewhat lower down
+in Dixie than the Upper Potomac--if indeed there would be any necessity
+for our being in service at all.
+
+"He was not a man of old tracks, like a ground mole; indeed like some
+military commanders who seem lost outside of them; but of ready
+resources and direct routes, gathering influence now by one means and
+then by another, and perhaps both novel. Now Simon set me at work in
+this wise.
+
+"'Tom,' one morning, says an old and respected citizen of our place, who
+knew my father and my father's father, and me as an unlucky dog from my
+cradle, 'Tom, did ever any idea of getting a permanent and profitable
+position--say, as you are an excellent penman--as clerk in one of the
+departments at Harrisburg or Washington, enter your head?'
+
+"At this I straightened up, drew up my shirt collar, pulled down my
+vest, and said with a sort of hopeful inquiry, 'Why should there?'
+
+"'Tom, you are wasting your most available talent. Do you know that you
+have influence--and political influence at that?'
+
+"Another hitch at my shirt collar and pull at my vest, as visions of the
+Brick Capitol at Harrisburg and the White one at Washington danced
+before my eyes.
+
+"'Did you ever reflect, Tom, upon the source of political power?'
+continued the old gentleman, and without waiting for an answer,
+fortunately, as I was fast becoming dumbfoundered, 'the people, Tom, the
+people; not you and I, so much as that miner,' said he, pointing to a
+rough ugly-looking fellow that I had kicked out of my wife's
+bar-room--or, rather, got my ostler to do it--two nights before, 'That
+man, Tom, is a representative of thousands; we may represent but
+ourselves. Now these people are controlled. They neither think nor act
+for themselves, as a general rule; somebody does that for them. Now,' as
+he spoke, trying to take me by a pulled-out button-hole, 'you might as
+well be that somebody as any man I know.'
+
+"'Why, Lord bless you, Mr. Simpson, I can't do my own thinking, and as
+to acting, my wife says I am acting the fool all day long.'
+
+"'Tom, you don't comprehend me, you know our county sends three members
+to the State Legislature, and that they elect a United States Senator.'
+
+"'Yes.'
+
+"'Well, now, our county can send Simon C---- to the United States
+Senate.'
+
+"'But our county oughtn't to do it,'--my whig prejudices that I had
+imbibed with my mother's milk coming up strong.
+
+"'Tut, tut, Tom, didn't I stand shoulder to shoulder with your father in
+the old Clay Legion? Whiggery has had its day, and Henry Clay would
+stand with us now.'
+
+"'But with Simon's?'
+
+"'Yes, Simon's principles have undergone a wholesome change.'
+
+"I couldn't see it, but didn't like to contradict the old man, and he
+continued.
+
+"'Now, Thomas, be a man; you have influence. I know you have it.' Here I
+straightened up again. 'Just look at the miners who frequent your hotel,
+each of them has influence, and don't you think that you could control
+their votes? Should you succeed, Simon's Scotch blood will never let him
+forget a friend.'
+
+"'Or forgive an enemy,' I added.
+
+"'Tom, don't let your foolish prejudices stand in the way of your
+success. Your father would advise as I do.'
+
+"'Mr. S., I'll try.'
+
+"'That's the word, Tom,' said the old man, patting me on the shoulder.
+'It runs our steam-engines, builds our factories, in short, has made our
+country what it is.'
+
+"I took Mr. S.'s hand, thanked him for his suggestions, with an effort
+swallowed my prejudices against the old Chieftain, and resolved to work
+as became my new idea of my position.
+
+"By the way, the recollection of that effort to swallow makes my throat
+dry, and it's a long time between drinks."
+
+Another round at the bottle, and Tom resumed.
+
+"'Well, work I did, like a beaver; there wasn't a miner in my
+neighborhood that I didn't treat, and a miner's baby that I didn't kiss,
+and often their wives, as some unprincipled scoundrel one day told Mrs.
+Hudson, to the great injury of my ears and shins for almost a week, and
+the upshot of the business was, that my township turned a political
+somerset. Friends of Simon's, in disguise, went to Harrisburg, were
+successful, and I was not among the last to congratulate him.
+
+"'Mr. Hudson,' said the Prince of politicians, 'how can I repay you for
+your services?'
+
+"Like a fool, as my wife always told me I was, I made no suggestion, but
+let the remark pass with the tameness of a sheep--merely muttering that
+it was a pleasure to serve him. Simon went to Washington--made no
+striking hits on the floor, but was great on committees.
+
+"Another idea entered my noddle, this clip without the aid of Mr. S. My
+penmanship came into play. Days and nights of most laborious work
+produced a full length portrait of Simon, that at the distance of ten
+feet could not be distinguished from a fine engraving. I seized my
+opportunity, found Simon in cozy quarters opposite Willard's, and
+presented it in person. He was delighted--his daughter was delighted--a
+full-faced heavily bearded Congressman present was delighted, and after
+repeated assurances of 'thine to serve,' on the part of the Senator, I
+crossed to my hotel--not Willard's--hadn't as yet sufficient elevation
+of person and depth of purse for that,--but an humbler one in a back
+street. Next day I saw my handiwork in the Rotunda--the admiration of
+all but a black long-haired puppy, an M. C. and F. F. V., as I
+afterwards learned, who said to a lady at his elbow who had admired it,
+'Practice makes some of the poor clerks at the North tolerably good
+pensmen.' I could have kicked him, but thought it might interfere with
+the little matter in hand.
+
+"'Tom,' said the senatorial star of my hopes one day, when my purse had
+become as lean as a June shad, 'Tom, there is a place of $800 a year, I
+have in view. A Senator is interfering, but I think it can be managed.
+You must have patience, these things take time. I will write to you as
+early as any definite result is attained.'
+
+"Relying on Simon's management, which in his own case had never failed,
+next morning saw me in the cars with light heart and lighter purse,
+bound for home and Mrs. H., who I am always proud to think regretted my
+absence more than my presence, although she would not admit it.
+
+"Days passed; months passed; my wife reproached me with lost time--my
+picture was gone; I had not heard from Simon; I ventured to write; next
+mail brought a letter rich in indefinite promises.
+
+"Years passed, and Simon was Secretary of War at a time when the office
+had influence, position, and patronage, unequalled in its previous
+history. 'Now is your time, Tom,' something within whispered--not
+conscience--for that did not seem to favor my connection with Simon.
+
+"I wrote again. Quarter-Masters, Clerks by the thousands, Paymasters--I
+was always remarkably ready in disposing of funds--and Heaven only knows
+what not were wanted in alarming numbers. Active service was proposed by
+Simon; but you know, gentlemen, I am constitutionally disqualified for
+that. And after tediously waiting months longer, I succeeded without
+Simon's aid in obtaining my present honorable but unfortunate position.
+
+"And that reminds me of the whiskey, another round, men." It was taken;
+Tom's idea was to drink the detail into forgetfulness of their errand.
+But he missed his men. He might as well have tried to lessen a sponge by
+soaking it. The Virginia Captain announced that the Colonel had ordered
+them to confiscate the whiskey for the use of the Hospital, and to the
+Surgeon's quarters the detail must next proceed. The Captain gathered up
+the bottles. The detail bowed themselves out of the tent, and poor Tom
+thought his misfortunes crowned, as he saw them leave laboring under a
+load of liquor inside and out. At the Surgeon's tent we will again see
+them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+_The Scene at the Surgeon's Quarters--Our Little Dutch Doctor--Incidents
+of his Practice.--His Messmate the Chaplain--The Western Virginia
+Captain's account of a Western Virginia Chaplain--His Solitary oath--How
+he Preached, how he Prayed, and how he Bush-whacked--His revenge of
+Snowden's death--How the little Dutch doctor applied the Captain's
+Story._
+
+
+Taps had already been sounded before the detail arrived at the Surgeon's
+tent. The only Surgeon present had retired to his blankets. Aroused by
+the blustering, he soon lit a candle, and sticking the camp candlestick
+into the ground, invited them in.
+
+And here we must introduce the Assistant-Surgeon, or rather the little
+Dutch Doctor as he was familiarly called by the men. Considering his
+character and early connexion with the regiment, we are at fault in not
+giving him an earlier place in these pages.
+
+The Doctor was about five feet two in height, hardly less in
+circumference about the waist, of an active habit of body and turn of
+mind, eyes that winked rapidly when he was excited, and a movable scalp
+which threw his forehead into multiform wrinkles as cogitations beneath
+it might demand. A Tyrolese by birth, he was fond of his Father-land,
+its mountain songs, and the customs of its people. Topics kindred to
+these were an unfailing fund of conversation with him. Thoroughly
+educated, his conversation in badly-broken English, for he made little
+progress in acquiring the language, at once amused and instructed. Among
+his fellow surgeons and officers of his acquaintance, he ranked high as
+a skilful surgeon on account of superior attainments, acquired partly
+through the German Universities and partly in the Austrian service,
+during the campaign of Magenta, Solferino, and the siege of Mantua. With
+a German's fondness for music, he beguiled the tedium of many a long
+winter evening. With his German education he had imbibed radicalism to
+its full extent. Thoroughly conversant with the Sacred Scriptures he was
+a doubter, if not a positive unbeliever, from the Pentateuch to
+Revelation. In addition to this, his flings at the Chaplain, his
+messmate, made him unpopular with the religiously inclined of the
+regiment. He had besides, the stolidity of the German, and their cool
+calculating practicalism. This did not always please the men. They
+thought him unfeeling.
+
+"What for you shrug your shoulders?' said he on one occasion to a man
+from whose shoulders he was removing a large fly blister.
+
+"It hurts."
+
+"Bah, wait till I cuts your leg off--and you know what hurts."
+
+"Here, you sick man, here goot place," said he, addressing a man just
+taken to the hospital with fever, in charge of an orderly sergeant, at
+surgeon's call, "goot place, nice, warm, dead man shust left." Remarks
+such as these did not, of course, tend to increase the comfort of the
+men; they soon circulated among the regiment, were discussed in
+quarters, and as may be supposed greatly exaggerated, and all at the
+Doctor's cost. But the Doctor pursued the even tenor of his way,
+entirely unmindful of them.
+
+About the time of which we write, a clever, honest man died of a disease
+always sudden in its termination, rheumatic attack upon the heart. The
+Doctor had informed him fully of his disease, and that but little could
+be done for it. The poor man, however, was punctual in attendance at
+Surgeon's Call, and insisted upon some kind of medicine. Bread pills
+were furnished. One morning, after great complaint of pain about the
+heart, and a few spasms, he died. His comrades, shocked, thought his
+death the effect of improper medicine. The Doctor's pride was touched.
+He insisted upon calling in other surgeons; the pills found in his
+pocket were analyzed, and discovered to be only bread. The corpse was
+opened, and the cause of death fully revealed. As the Doctor walked away
+in stately triumph, some of the men who had been boisterous against him,
+approached by way of excusing their conduct, and said that now they were
+perfectly satisfied. "What you know!" was his gruff reply, "you not know
+a man's heart from a pig's."
+
+Many like incidents might be told--but we must not leave these Captains
+standing too long at the door of the tent; with the production of the
+light in they came, with the remark that they had brought hospital
+supplies. In the meantime several officers, field and company, attracted
+by the noise and whiskey; came in from regimental head-quarters.
+
+"Must see if goot," and the Doctor applied the bottle to his lips; it
+was not a favorite drink of his, and tasted badly in lieu of Rhine wine
+or lager.
+
+"May be goot whiskey."
+
+"Let practical whiskey drinkers have a chance," said two or three at
+once, and the bottle went its round.
+
+The test was not considered satisfactory until another and another had
+been emptied.
+
+The increasing confusion aroused the Chaplain, who hitherto had been
+snugly ensconced beneath his blankets in the corner opposite the Doctor.
+
+"Here, Chaplain, your opinion, and don't let us hear anything about
+putting the bottle to your neighbor's lips," said a rough voice in the
+crowd. The Chaplain politely declined, with the remark that they
+appeared too anxious to put the bottle to their own lips to require any
+assistance from their neighbors.
+
+"Chaplain not spiritually minded," muttered the Doctor, "so far but
+three preaches, and every preach cost government much as sixty tollar."
+The calculation at the Chaplain's expense, amused the crowd, and annoyed
+the Chaplain, who resumed his blankets.
+
+"When I was in Western Virginny, under Rosecrans,"--
+
+"The old start and good for a yarn," said an officer.
+
+"Good for facts," replied the Chief of the Detail.
+
+"Never mind, Captain, we'll take it as fact," said the Adjutant.
+
+"We had a chaplain that was a chaplain in every sense of the word."
+
+"Did he drink and swear?" inquired a member of the Detail.
+
+"On long marches and in fights he had a canteen filled with what he
+called chaplain's cordial, about one part whiskey and three water. I
+tasted it, but with little comfort. One day, a member of Rosy's staff
+seeing him pulling at it, asked for it, and after a strong pull, told
+the chaplain that he was weak in spiritual things. 'Blessed are the poor
+in spirit,' was the quick answer of the chaplain. As to swearing, he was
+never known to swear but once.
+
+"I heard an officer tell the Adjutant a day or two ago, that what was
+considered the prettiest sentence in the English language, had been
+written by a smutty preacher. I don't recollect the words as he repeated
+it, but it was about an old officer, who nursed a young one, and some
+one told him the young one would die. The old officer excited, said, 'By
+G--d, he sha'nt die.' It goes on to say then that an Angel flew up to
+heaven, to enter it in the great Book of Accounts, and that the Angel
+who made the charge cried over it and blotted it out. That is the
+substance anyhow. Well, sir, if the Third Virginny's Chaplain's oath was
+ever recorded it is in the same fix."
+
+"Well, tell us about it, how it happened," exclaimed several.
+
+"Why you see, Rosy sent over one day for a Major who had lately come
+into the Division, and told him that 300 rebels were about six miles to
+our left, in the bushes along a creek, and that he should take 300 men,
+and kill, capture, or drive them off. The Major was about to make a
+statement. 'That's all, Major,' with a wave of his hand for him to
+leave, 'I expect a good account.'
+
+"That was Rosy's style: he told an officer what he wanted, and he
+supposed the officer had gumption enough to do it, without bothering
+him, as some of our red-tape or pigeon-hole Generals, as the boys call
+them, do with long written statements that a memory like a tarred stick
+couldn't remember--telling where these ten men must be posted, those
+twenty-five, and another thirty, etc. I wonder what such office Generals
+think--that the Rebels will be fools enough to attack us when we want
+them to, or take ground that we would like to have them make a stand
+on."
+
+"Captain, we talk enough ourselves about that; on with the story."
+
+"Well, four companies, seventy-five strong each, were detailed to go
+with him, and mine among the number, from our regiment. The chaplain got
+wind of it, and go he would. By the time the detail was ready, he had
+his bullets run, his powder-horn and fixin's on, and long Tom, as he
+called his Kentucky rifle, slung across his shoulder."
+
+"His canteen?" inquired an officer disposed to be a little troublesome.
+
+"Don't recollect about that," said the Captain, somewhat curtly.
+
+"On the march he mixed with the men, talked with them about all kinds of
+useful matters, and gave them a world of information.
+
+"We had got about a mile from where we supposed the Rebels were; my
+company, in advance as skirmishers, had just cleared a wood, and were
+ten yards in the open, when the Butternuts opened fire from a wood ahead
+at long rifle range. One man was slightly wounded. We placed him against
+a tree with his back to the Rebels, and under cover of the woods were
+deciding upon a plan of attack, when up gallops our fat Major with just
+breath enough to say, 'My God, what's to be done?'
+
+"I'll never forget the chaplain's look at that. He had unslung long Tom;
+holding it up in his right hand, he fairly yelled out, 'Fight, by G--d!
+Boys, follow me.' And we did follow him. Skirting around through
+underbrush to our left, concealed from the Rebs, we came to an open
+again of about thirty yards. The Rebs had retired about eighty yards in
+the wood to where it was thicker.
+
+"Out sprang the Chaplain, making a worm fence, Indian fashion, for a big
+chestnut. We followed in same style. My orderly was behind another
+chestnut about ten feet to the Chaplain's left, and slightly to his
+rear. There was for a spell considerable random firing, but no one hurt,
+and the Rebs again retired a little. We soon saw what the Chaplain was
+after. About eighty-five yards in his front was another big chestnut,
+and behind it a Rebel officer. They blazed away at each other in fine
+style--both good shots, as you could tell by the bark being chipped, now
+just where the Chaplain's head was, and now just where the officer's
+was. The officer was left-handed. The Chaplain could fire right or left
+equally well. By a kind of instinct for fair play and no gouging that
+even the Rebs feel at times, the rest on both sides looked at that
+fight, and wouldn't mix. My orderly had several chances to bring the
+Rebel. Their rifles cracked in quick succession for quite a spell. The
+Chaplain, at last, not wanting an all-day affair of it, carefully again
+drew a bead on a level with the chip marks on the left of the Rebel
+tree. He had barely time to turn his head without deranging the aim,
+when a ball passed through the rim of his hat. As he turned his head, he
+gave a wink to the orderly, who was quick as lightning in taking a hint.
+A pause for nearly a minute. By and by the Rebel pokes his head out to
+see what was the matter. Seeing the gun only, and thinking the Chaplain
+would give him a chance when he'd take aim, he did not pull it in as
+quick as usual. My orderly winked,--a sharp crack, and the Rebel officer
+threw up his hands, dropped his rifle, and fell backward, with well nigh
+an ounce ball right over his left eye, through and through his head. Our
+men cheered for the Chaplain. The Rebs fired in reply, and rushed to
+secure the body. That cost them three more men, but they got their
+bodies, and fast as legs could carry them, cut to their fort about
+three miles to their rear. We of course couldn't attack the fort, and
+returned to camp. The boys were loud in praise of the Chaplain. Their
+chin music, as they called camp rumors, had it that the officer killed
+was a Rebel chaplain. Old Rosy, when he heard of it, laughed, and swore
+like a trooper. I hear he has got over swearing now--but it couldn't
+have been until after he left Western Virginny. I heard our Chaplain say
+that he heard a brother chaplain say, and he believed him to be a
+Christian,--that he believed that the Apostle Paul himself would learn
+to swear inside of six months, if he entered the service in Western
+Virginny. Washington prayed at Trenton, and swore at Monmouth, and I
+don't believe that the War Department requires Chaplains to be better
+Christians than Washington. Our old Chaplain used to say that there were
+many things worse than swearing, and that he didn't believe that men
+often swore away their chances of heaven."
+
+"Comforting gospel for you, captain," said that troublesome officer.
+
+"He was a bully chaplain," continued the captain, becoming more
+animated, probably because the regimental chaplain, turtle-like, had
+again protruded his head from between the blankets. "He had no long
+tailed words or doctrines that nobody understood, that tire soldiers,
+because they don't understand them, and make them think that the
+chaplain is talking only to a few officers. That's what so often keeps
+men away from religious services. Our chaplain used to say that you
+could tell who Paul was talking to by his style of talk. I can't say how
+that is from my own reading; but I always heard that Paul was a sensible
+man, and if so he certainly would suit himself to the understanding of
+his crowd."
+
+"Our old chaplain talked right at you. No mistake he meant
+you--downright, plain, practical, and earnest. He'd tell his crowd of
+backwoodsmen, flatboatmen and deck hands--the hardest customers that the
+gospel was ever preached to,--'That the war carried on by the Government
+was the most righteous of wars; they were doing God's service by
+fighting in it. On the part of the rebels it was the most unnatural and
+wicked of wars. They called it a second Revolutionary War, the
+scoundrels! When my father and your father, Tom Hulzman,' said he,
+addressing one of his hearers, 'fought in the Revolution, they fought
+against a tyrannical monarchy that was founded upon a landed
+aristocracy--that is, rich big feeling people, that owned very big
+farms. The Government stands in this war, if any thing, better than our
+fathers stood. We fight against what is far worse than a landed
+aristocracy, meaner in the sight of God and more hated by honest men,
+this accursed slave aristocracy, that will, if they whip us--(Can't do
+that, yell the crowd.) No, they can't. If they should, we would be no
+better than the poor whites that are permitted to live a dog's life on
+some worn-out corner of a nigger-owner's plantation. Would you have your
+children, Joe Dixon, insulted, made do the bidding of some long-haired
+lank mulatto nabob? (Never, says Joe.) Then, boys, look to your arms,
+fire low, and don't hang on the aim. We must fight this good fight out,
+and thank God we can do it. If we die, blessed will be our memory in the
+hearts of our children. If we live and go to our firesides
+battle-scarred, our boys can say, 'See how dad fought, and every scar in
+front,' and we'll be honored by a grateful people.' And he'd tell of the
+sufferings of their parents, wives, and children, if we didn't succeed,
+till the water courses on the dirty faces of his crowd would be as plain
+as his preaching.
+
+"And pray! he'd pray with hands and eyes both open, in such a way that
+every one believed it would have immediate attention; that God would
+damn the Rebellion; and may be next day he'd have Long Tom doing its
+full share in hurrying the rebels themselves to damnation.
+
+"And kind hearted! why old Tim Larkins, who had a wound on the shin that
+wouldn't heal, told me with tears in his eyes that he had been mother,
+wife, and child to him. He went about doing good.
+
+"And now I recollect," and the Captain's eye glistened as he spoke, "how
+he acted when young Snowden was wounded. Snowden was a slender,
+pale-faced stripling of sixteen, beloved by every body that knew him,
+and if ever a perfect Christian walked this earth, he was one, even if
+he was in service in Western Virginny. The chaplain was fond of company,
+and, as was his duty, mixed with the men. Snowden was reserved, much by
+himself, and had little or no chance to learn bad habits; that is the
+only way I can account for his goodness. I often heard the chaplain tell
+the boys to imitate Snowden, and not himself; 'you'll find a pure mouth
+there, boys, because the heart is pure; you'll see no letters of
+introduction to the devil,' as the chaplain called cards, 'in his
+knapsack.' By the way, he was so hard on cards, that even the boatmen,
+who knew them better than their A B C's, were ashamed to play them. He
+would say, 'Snowden is brave as man can be; he has a right to be, he is
+prepared for every fate. A christian, boys, makes all the better soldier
+for his being a Christian,' and he would tell us of Washington, Col.
+Gardner, that preacher that suffered, fought and died near Elizabeth, in
+the Jerseys, and others.
+
+"In bravery, none excelled Snowden. We were lying down once, but about
+sixty yards from a wood chuck full of rebels, when word was sent that
+our troops on the left must be signalled, to charge in a certain way.
+Several understood the signs, but Snowden first rose, mounted a stump,
+and did not get off although receiving flesh wounds in half-a-dozen
+different places, and his clothing cut to ribands, until he saw the
+troops moving as directed. How we gritted our teeth as we heard the
+bullets whiz by that brave boy. I have the feeling yet. We thought his
+goodness saved him. His was goodness! Not that kind that will stare a
+preacher full in the face from a cushioned pew on Sunday, and gouge you
+over the counter on Monday, but the genuine article. His time was yet to
+come.
+
+"One day we had driven the rebels through a rough country some miles,
+skirmishing with their rear-guard; the Chaplain and Snowden with my
+company foremost. We neared a small but deep creek the rebels had
+crossed, and trying to get across, we were scattered along the bank. I
+heard a shot, and as I turned I saw poor Snowden fall, first on his knee
+and then on his elbow. I called the Chaplain. They were messmates--he
+loved Snowden as his own child, and always called him 'my boy.' He
+rushed to him, 'My boy, who fired that shot?' The lad turned to a clump
+of bushes about 80 yards distant on the other side of the creek. Long
+Tom was in hand, but the rebel was first, and a ball cut the Chaplain's
+coat collar. The flash revealed him; in an instant long Tom was in
+range, and another instant saw a Butternut belly face the sun. Dropping
+his piece, falling upon his knee, he raised Snowden gently up with his
+left hand. 'I am dying,' whispered the boy, 'tell my mother I'll meet
+her in heaven.' The Chaplain raised his right hand, his eyes swimming
+in tears, and in tones that I'll never forget, and that make me a better
+man every time I think of them, he said, 'O God, the pure in heart is
+before thee, redeem thy promise, and reveal thyself.' A slight gurgle,
+and with a pleasant smile playing upon his countenance, the soul of John
+Snowden, if there be justice in heaven, went straight up to the God who
+gave it." Tears had come to the Captain's eyes, and were glistening in
+the eyes of most of the crowd.
+
+The Dutch doctor alone was unmoved. Stoically he remarked, "Very goot
+story, Captain, goot story, do our Chaplain much goot."
+
+The crowd left quietly--all but the Captain, who, never forgetting
+business in the hurry of the moment, drew a receipt for the transfer of
+thirteen bottles of whiskey to the hospital department, which the doctor
+signed without reading.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+_A Day at Division Head-Quarters--The Judge Advocate--The tweedle-dum
+and tweedle-dee of Red-Tape as understood by Pigeon-hole
+Generals--Red-tape Reveries--French Authorities on Pigeon-hole
+Investigations--An Obstreperous Court and Pigeon-hole
+Strictures--Disgusting Head-Quarter Profanity._
+
+
+"The General commanding Division desires to see Lieutenant Colonel ----,
+210th Regiment, P. V., Judge Advocate, immediately," were words that met
+the eye of the latter officer, as he unfolded a note handed him by an
+orderly. It was about nine in the forenoon of a fine day in October.
+Buckling on his sword, and ordering his horse, he rode at a lively
+canter to the General's Head-Quarters.
+
+"Colonel," said the General, pulling vigorously at the same time at the
+left side of his moustache, as if anxious that his teeth should take
+hold of it, "I have sent for you in regard to this Record. Do you know,
+sir, that this Record has given me a d----d sight of trouble; why, sir,
+I consulted authorities the greater part of last night, French and
+American."
+
+"In regard to what point, General?"
+
+"In regard to what point? In regard to all the points, sir. There, sir,
+is the copy made of that order detailing the Court. It reads, 'Detailed
+for the Court,' whereas it should be 'Detail for the Court.' My mind is
+not made up fully as to whether the variance vitiates the Record or not.
+The authorities appear to be silent upon that point. To say the least,
+it is d----d awkward."
+
+"General, the copy is a faithful one of the order issued from your
+Head-Quarters."
+
+"From my Head-Quarters, sir? By G--d, Colonel, that can't be. If I have
+been particular, and have prided myself upon any one thing, it has been
+upon having papers drawn strictly according to the Regulations. And I
+have tried to impress it upon my clerks. That infernal blunder made at
+my Head-Quarters! I'll soon see how that is." And the General, Record in
+hand, took long strides, for a little man, towards the Adjutant's tent.
+
+"Captain," said he, addressing an officer who was best known in the
+Division as a relative of a leading commander, and whose only claim to
+merit--in fact, it had to counterbalance many habits positively
+bad--consisted of his reposing under the shadow of a mighty name, "where
+is the original order detailing this Court?" "Here, General," said a
+clerk, producing the paper. The General's eye rested for a moment upon
+it, then throwing it upon the table, he burst out passionately:
+"Captain, this is too G--d d--n bad after all my care and trouble in
+giving you full instructions. Is it possible that the simplest order
+can't be made out without my supervision, as if, by G--d, it was my
+business to stand over your desks all day long, see every paper folded,
+endorsement made, and the right pigeon-hole selected? This won't do. I
+give full instructions, and expect them carried out. By G--d," continued
+the General, striding vehemently across to his marquee, "they must be
+carried out."
+
+"Colonel, I see that you are not accountable for this. If the d----d
+fool had only made it 'Detail of the Court,' it might have passed
+unnoticed."
+
+"General," suggested the Colonel, "would not that have been improper?
+Would it not have implied an already existing organization of the court?
+whereas the phrase in the order is intended merely to indicate who shall
+compose the court."
+
+"It would have looked better, sir," said the General, somewhat sharply.
+"Colonel, you are not to blame for this; you can return to quarters,
+sir."
+
+The Colonel bowed himself out, remounted his black horse, and while
+riding at a slow walk, could not but wonder if the Government would not
+have been the gainer if it had made it the business of the General to
+fold and endorse papers, and dust pigeon-holes. It was generally
+understood that this occupation had been, previous to his being placed
+in command of the Division, the sum-total of the General's military
+experience. And how high above him did this red-tapism extend? The
+General had been on McClellan's staff, and through his influence,
+doubtless, acquired his present position. Were its trifling details
+detaining the grand army of the Potomac from an onward movement in this
+most favorable weather, to the great detriment of national finances, the
+encouragement of the Rebellion, and the depression of patriots
+everywhere? Must the earnestness of the patriotic, self-sacrificing
+thousands in the field, be fettered by these cobwebs, constructed by men
+interested in pay and position? If so, then in its widest sense, is the
+utterance of an intelligent Sergeant, made a few days previous, true,
+that red-tape was a greater curse to the country than the rebellion. The
+loyal earnest masses would soon, if unfettered, have found leaders
+equally loyal and earnest--Joshuas born in the crisis of a righteous
+cause, whose unceasing blows would not have allowed the rebels breathing
+spells. It is not too late; but how much time, blood, to say nothing of
+money, have been expended in ascertaining that a great Union military
+leader thought the war in its best phase a mere contest for boundaries.
+
+The black halted at the tent door, was turned over to his attendant, and
+the Lieut.-Colonel joined his tent companion the Colonel.
+
+His stay was brief. In the course of a few minutes an orderly in great
+haste handed him the following note:
+
+"The General commanding Division desires to see Lieut.-Colonel ----
+without delay."
+
+The saddle, not yet off the black, was readjusted, and again the
+Judge-Advocate cantered over the gentle bluffs to Division
+Head-Quarters.
+
+"Colonel," said the General, hardly waiting for his entrance, "these
+mistakes multiply so, as I proceed in my duty as Reviewing Officer, that
+I am utterly confounded as to what course to pursue."
+
+"Will you please point them out, General?"
+
+"Point out the Devil!--will you point to something that is strictly in
+accordance with the regulations? Here you have 'Private John W. Holman,
+Co. I, 212th Regt. P. V.,' and then not two lines below, it is, John W.
+Holman, Private, Co. I, 212th Reg. P. V.' Now, by G--Colonel, one is
+certainly wrong, and _that_ blunder did not come from Division
+Head-Quarters."
+
+"Will the General please indicate which is correct?"
+
+"Indicate! that's the d----l of it, that is the perplexing question; my
+French authorities are silent on the subject, and yet, sir, you must
+see that one must be wrong."
+
+"That does not follow, General; it would be considered a mere clerical
+error. Records that I have seen have titles preceding and following
+both."
+
+"There is no such thing in military law as a mere clerical error. Every
+thing is squared here by the regulations and military law. The General
+or Colonel who is unfortunate in consequence of strictly following
+these, will not, by military men, regular officers at least, be held
+accountable. Do not understand me as combating your knowledge of the
+law, Colonel; you may have excused, in your practice, bad records
+successfully on the ground of 'clerical errors,' but it will not do in
+the army. There's where volunteer officers make their mistakes; they
+don't think and act concertedly as regulars do. Individual judgment
+steps in too often, and officers' judgments play the D--l in the army.
+Now, in France, their rules in regard to this, are unusually strict."
+
+"They order this matter better in France then," observed the Colonel,
+mechanically making use of the hackneyed opening sentence of "The
+Sentimental Journey." "And they manage them better, Sir;--Another thing,
+Colonel," quickly added the General, "t's must be crossed and i's
+carefully dotted. There are several omissions of this kind that might
+have sent the Record back. By the way, whose hand-writing is this copy
+in?" said the General, looking earnestly at the Colonel. "A clerk's,
+sir." "A clerk! Another d----d pretty piece of business," continued the
+General, rising. "Colonel, that record is not worth a G--d d--n not a
+G--d d--n, Sir! Who ever heard of a clerk being employed? no clerk has a
+right to know any thing of the proceedings."
+
+"I have been informed, General, and have observed from published reports
+of proceedings of courts-martial, that clerks are in general use."
+
+"Can't be! Colonel, can't be! By G--d, there is another perplexing
+matter for my already over-taxed time, and yet the senseless people
+expect Generals to move large armies, and plan big battles, when their
+hands are full of these d----d business details that cannot be neglected
+or delayed."
+
+The General resumed his seat, ran his fingers through his hair with
+frightful rapidity, as if gathering disconcerted and scattered ideas,
+for a moment or two, and then looking up dismissed the Colonel.
+
+The black was again in requisition; and again the Colonel's thoughts,
+with increased feelings of disgust, were directed to what he could not
+but think the trifling details that, as the General admitted, delay the
+movements of great armies, and the striking of heavy blows. T's must be
+crossed when we ought to be crossing the Potomac; i's dotted when we
+ought to be dotting Virginia fields with our tents. And war so
+proverbially, so historically uncertain, has its rules, which, if
+adhered to, will save commanders from censure--judgment not allowed to
+interfere. It would appear so from many movements in the history of the
+Army of the Potomac. What would that despiser of senseless details,
+defier of rules laid down by inferior men, and cutter of red tape, as
+well as master-genius in the art of war, the Great, the First Napoleon,
+have said to all this. Shades of Washington, Marion, Morgan, all the
+Revolutionary worthies, Jackson, all our Volunteer Officers, of whose
+military records we are justly proud--
+
+          "Of the mighty can it be
+          That this is all remains of thee!"
+
+Generals leading armies such as the world never before saw, fettering
+movements on the field by the movements of trifling office details at
+the desk, which viewed in the best light are the most contemptible of
+excuses for delay.
+
+This time the old black was not unsaddled;--a fortunate thought, as
+another request for the immediate presence of the Judge Advocate
+compelled him to take his dinner of boiled beans hasty and hot.
+
+Whatever the reader may think of the General's condition of mind during
+the preceding interviews, it was to reach its fever heat in this. The
+Colonel saw, as he entered the marquee, that his forced calmness of
+demeanor portended a storm. Whether the Colonel thought that a
+half-emptied good-sized tumbler of what looked like clear brandy which
+stood on the table before him, had anything to do with it, the reader
+must judge for himself.
+
+"Colonel, I had made up my mind to forward that Record with the mistakes
+I have already indicated to you, but after all I am pained to state that
+the total disregard of duty by the Court, and perhaps by yourself, in
+trifling--yes, by G--d--" here the General could keep in no longer, and
+rising with hand clinching the Record firmly, continued,--"trifling with
+a soldier's duty, the regulations, and the safety of the army will not
+allow it. Colonel, you are a lawyer, and is it possible that you can't
+see what that d----d Court has done?"
+
+"I would be happy to be informed in what respect they have erred,
+General."
+
+"Happy to be informed! how they have erred! By G--d, Colonel, you take
+this outrageous matter cool. That Record," said the General, holding it
+up, and waving it about his head,--the red tape with which the Judge
+Advocate had adorned it plentifully, if for no other purpose than to
+cover a multitude of mistakes, all the while streaming in the
+air,--"that Record is a disgrace to the Division. What does that Record
+show?" At this he threw it violently into a corner of the tent. "It
+shows, by G--d, that here was an enlisted soldier in the United States
+Army, found sleeping on his post in the dead hour of night, in the
+presence of the enemy, and yet--" said the General, lifting both hands
+clenched, "a pack of d----d volunteer officers detailed as a court let
+him off. Yes, I'll be G--d d----d," and his arms came down slapping
+against his hips, "let him off, with what? why a reprimand at dress
+parade, that isn't worth a d--n as a punishment. Here was a chance to
+benefit the Division; yes, sir, a military execution would do this
+Division good. It needs it; we'll have a d----d sight now to be
+court-martialed. What will General McClellan say with that record before
+him? Think of that, Colonel.'
+
+"I would be much more interested in what Judge Advocate Holt would say,
+General, on account of his vastly superior ability in that department;
+and as to the death penalty, General, I conscientiously think it would
+be little short of, if not quite, murder." The General had resumed his
+seat, but now arose as if about to interrupt;--but the Colonel
+continued:--
+
+"General, that boy is but seventeen, with a look that indicates
+unmistakably that he is half an idiot. He has an incurable disease that
+tends to increase his imbecility. His memory, if he ever had any, is
+completely gone. The Articles of War, or instructions of officers as to
+picket duty, would not be remembered by him a minute after utterance,
+and not understood when uttered. I have thought since that I should have
+entered a plea of insanity for him. He had not previously been upon
+duty for a month, and was that day placed on by mistake. The Court, if
+it had had the power, would have punished the officer that recruited him
+severely. He ought to be discharged; and the Court was informed that his
+application for discharge, based upon an all-sufficient surgeon's
+certificate, was forwarded to your head-quarters a month ago, and has
+not since been heard from. Besides, this was not a picket station, but a
+mere inside regimental camp guard."
+
+The Colonel spoke rapidly, but with coolness;--all the while the
+General's eyes, fairly glowing, were gazing down intently upon him.
+
+"Colonel, if your manner was not respectful, I would think that you
+intended insulting me by your d----d provoking coolness. Conscience!"
+said the General, sneeringly, "conscience or no conscience, that man
+must be duly sentenced. By G--d, I order it. You must reconvene the
+Court without delay. It is well seen it is not a detail of Regulars.
+Conscience wouldn't trouble them when a d----d miscreant was upon trial.
+A boy of seventeen! Seventeen or thirty-seven! By G--d! he is a soldier
+in the Army of the United States, and must be tried and punished as a
+soldier. An idiot! What need you care about the brains of a soldier? If
+he has the army cap on his head, that's all you need require. Plea of
+insanity, indeed! We want no lawyer's tricks here. And as to that
+discharge, if it is detained at my head-quarters, it is because it was
+not properly folded or endorsed--may be will not fit neatly in the
+pigeon-hole. Colonel," continued the General, moderating his tone
+somewhat, "I must animadvert--by G--d, I must animadvert severely upon
+that Record."
+
+"General," quietly interrupted the Colonel, "you will publish your
+animadversion, I trust, so that it can be read at dress parades, and the
+Division have the benefit of it."
+
+"There, Colonel," said the General, twitching his moustache violently,
+"there it is again. You appear perfectly courteous--but that remark is
+cool contempt. I want you to understand," his tones louder, and
+gesticulations violent, "that you must take my strictures, tell the
+court that they must impose the sentence I direct, and leave conscience
+to me, and no d----d plea of insanity about it."
+
+"General," observed the Colonel, rising, "I am the counsel of the
+prisoner as well as of the United States. I cannot and will not injure
+my own conscience, wrong the prisoner, or humiliate the Government by
+insisting upon a death penalty."
+
+"Read my strictures to the court, and do your duty, sir, or I'll
+court-martial the whole d----d establishment. Go and re-assemble your
+court forthwith."
+
+As he said this he handed a couple of closely written sheets of large
+sized letter-paper, tied with the inevitable red-tape, to the Colonel.
+The Colonel bowed himself out, and the chair in front of the
+pigeon-holes of the camp desk was again occupied by a living embodiment
+of red-tape.
+
+The court was forthwith notified. It immediately met. The strictures
+were read, and in case of many sentences, especially towards the close,
+from necessity re-read by the Judge Advocate. After considerable
+laughter over the document, and some little indignation at the
+unwarranted dictation of "their commanding General," of which title the
+General had taken especial pains to remind them at least every third
+sentence, the court decided not to change the sentence, and directed the
+Judge Advocate to embody their reasons for the character of the
+sentence in his report. The reasons, much the same as those stated to
+the General by the Judge Advocate, were reduced to writing, and duly
+forwarded, with the record signed and attested, to their "commanding
+General." That record, like some other court-martial records of the
+Division, has not since been heard of as far as the Judge Advocate or
+any member of the court is informed. The poor boy a few days afterwards
+entered a hospital, not again to rejoin his regiment. His application
+for discharge has not been heard of. With no prospect of being fit for
+active service--dying by inches in fact,--he is compelled at Government
+expense to follow the regiment in an ambulance from camp to camp, and on
+all its tedious marches.
+
+The profanity in the foregoing chapter has doubtless disgusted the
+reader quite as much as its utterance did the Judge Advocate. And yet
+hundreds of the Division who have heard the General on hundreds of other
+occasions, the writer feels confident will certify that it is rather a
+mild mood of the General's that has been described. The habit is
+disgusting at all times. Many able Generals are addicted to the habit;
+but they are able in spite of it. That their influence would be
+increased without it, cannot be denied. It has been well said to be
+"neither brave, polite, nor wise." But now when the hopes of the nation
+centre in the righteousness of their cause, and thousands of prayers
+continually ascend for its furtherance from Christians in and out of
+uniform, how utterly contemptible! how outrageously wicked! for an
+officer of elevated position, to profane the Name under which those
+prayers are uttered, and upon which the nation relies as its "bulwark,"
+"its tower of strength," a very "present help in this its time of
+trouble."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+_A Picket-Station on the Upper Potomac--Fitz John's Rail Order--Rails
+for Corps Head-Quarters_ versus _Rails for Hospitals--The Western
+Virginia Captain--Old Rosy, and How to Silence Secesh Women--The Old
+Woman's Fixin's--The Captain's Orderly._
+
+
+Picket duty, while in this camp, was light. Even the little tediousness
+connected with it was relieved by the beautifully romantic character of
+the scenery. Confined entirely to the river front, the companies
+detailed were posted upon the three bluffs that extended the length of
+that front, and on the tow-path of the canal below.
+
+The duty, we have said, was light. It could hardly be considered
+necessary, in fact, were it not to discipline the troops. The bluffs
+were almost perpendicular, varying between seventy-five and one hundred
+feet in height. Immediately at their base was the Chesapeake and Ohio
+canal, averaging six feet in depth. A narrow towing-path separated it
+from the Potomac, which, in a broad, placid, but deep stream, broken
+occasionally by the sharp points of shelving rocks, mostly sunken, that
+ran in ridges parallel with the river course, flowed languidly; the
+water being dammed below as before mentioned.
+
+On one of the most inclement nights of the season, the Company
+commanded by our Western Virginia captain had been assigned the
+towing-path as its station. No enemy was in front, nor likely to be,
+from the manner in which that bank of the river was commanded by our
+batteries. In consequence, a few fires, screened by the bushes along the
+river bank, were allowed. Around these, the reserve and officers not on
+duty gathered.
+
+In a group standing around a smoky fire that struggled for existence
+with the steadily falling rain, stood our captain. His unusual silence
+attracted the attention of the crowd, and its cause was inquired into.
+
+"Boys, I'm disgusted; for the first time in my life since I have been in
+service; teetotally disgusted with the way things are carried on. I'm no
+greenhorn at this business either," continued the captain, assuming, as
+he spoke, the position of a soldier, and although somewhat ungainly when
+off duty, no man in the corps could take that position more correctly,
+or appear to better advantage. "I served five years as an enlisted man
+in an artillery regiment in the United States army, and left home in the
+night when I wasn't over sixteen, to do it; part of that time was in the
+Mexican war. Yes, sir, I saw nearly the whole of that. Since then, I've
+been in service nearly ever since this Rebellion broke out, and the
+hardest kind of service, and under nearly all kinds of officers, and by
+all that's holy, I never saw anything so mean nor was as much disgusted
+as I was to-day. Boys! when shoulder-straps with stars on begin to think
+that we are not human beings, of flesh and blood, liable to get sick,
+and when sick, needing attention like themselves, it's high time those
+straps change shoulders. These damp days we, and especially our sick,
+ought to be made comfortable. One great and good soldier that I've often
+heard tell of, wounded, of high rank, and who lived a long time ago,
+across the ocean, refused, although dying for want of drink, to touch
+water, until a wounded private near him first had drunk. That's the
+spirit. A man that'll do that, is right, one hundred chances to one in
+other respects. We have had such Generals, we have them now, and some
+may be in this corps, but it don't look like it."
+
+"Well, Captain, what did you see?"
+
+"Well, I had sent my Sergeant to get a few rails to keep a poor boy
+comfortable who had a high fever, and who could not get into the
+hospital for want of room. The wood that was cut from the hill was
+green, and the poor fellow had been nearly smoked to death. The Sergeant
+went with a couple of men, and was coming back, the men having two rails
+apiece, when just as they got the other side of the Toll-gate on the
+hill, the Provost-Guard stopped them, told them there was an order
+against their using rails, and they must drop them. It did no good to
+say that they were for a sick man, that was no go. They thought they had
+to do it, and did it. They hadn't come fifty yards toward camp, before
+one of those big six-mule corps-teams that have been hauling rails for
+the last four days, came along, and the rails were pitched into the
+wagon. When I heard of it I was wrothy. I cut a bee-line for the
+Adjutant and got the Order, and there it was in black and white, that no
+more fences--rebel fences--should be destroyed, and no more rails used.
+Now, I knew well that these corps-teams had hauled and hauled until the
+whole establishment, from General Porter down to his Darkies, were in
+rails up to their eyes, and then, when they had their own fill, this
+order comes, and we, poor devils, might whistle. Here were our hospitals
+like smoke-houses, not fit for human beings, and especially the sick. It
+was a little too d----d mean. I couldn't stand it. The more I thought of
+it the madder I got, and I got fighting mad, when I thought how often
+that same General in his kid gloves, fancy rig, and cloak thrown back
+from his shoulders to show all the buttons and stars, had passed me
+without noticing my salute. He never got a second chance, and never
+will. I started off, took three more men than the Sergeant had; went to
+the first fence I could find, and that was about two miles--for the
+corps-teams had made clean work--loaded my men and myself, and started
+back. The Provost-Guard was at the old place; I was bound to pass them
+squarely.
+
+"'Captain,' said the Sergeant, 'we have orders to stop all parties
+carrying rails.'
+
+"'By whose orders?'
+
+"'General Porter's.'
+
+"'I am one of General Porter's men. I have authority for this, sir,'
+said I, looking him full in the eye.
+
+"'Boys, move on!' and on we did move. When the Lieut. saw us filing left
+over the hill towards camp, he sent a squad after us. But it was too
+late. The Devil himself couldn't have had the rails in sight of my
+company quarters, and I told him so.
+
+"'I'll report you to the Division General, and have you
+court-martialed, sir.'
+
+"'Very well,' although I knew the General had a mania for
+courts-martial. 'I have been court-martialed four times, and cleared
+every clip.'
+
+"'Now let that court-martial come; somebody's meanness will see the
+light,' thought I.
+
+"Old Rosy, boys, was the man. I said I was disgusted, but we mustn't get
+discouraged. We have some earnest men--yes, I believe, plenty of them;
+but they're not given a fair show. It'll all come right, though, I
+believe. Men with hearts in them; and Rosy, let me tell you, is no runt
+in that litter.
+
+"'Captain,' said he to me one day when I had gone to his head-quarters
+according to orders, 'I have something that must be done without delay,
+and from what I've seen of you, you are just the man for the work. I
+passed our hospital a few minutes ago, and I thought it was about to
+blaze; the smoke came out of the windows, chimney, doors, and every
+little crack so damnably. I turned around and went in, and found that
+the smoke had filled it, and that the poor fellows were suffering
+terribly. Now, Captain, they have no dry wood, and they must have some
+forth with, and I'll tell you where to get it.
+
+"'The other day I rode by a nest of she-rebels, and found that they had
+cord upon cord of the best hickory piled up in the yard, as if cut by
+their husbands, before leaving, for use this winter. They have made
+provision enough for our hospital too. Now take three army wagons, as
+many men as you need, and go about three miles out the Little Gap Road
+till you come to a new weather-boarded house at the Forks. Make quick
+work, Captain.'
+
+"I did make quick work in getting there, for that was about ten, and
+about half-past eleven the government wagons were in the yard of the
+house and my company in front.
+
+"'We have no chickens,' squalled an old woman from a second-story
+window, 'nor pigs, nor anything--all gone. We are lone women.'
+
+"'Only in the day-time, I reckon,' said my orderly; the same fellow
+that winked at the chaplain. He was one of the roughest fellows that
+ever kept his breath over night. Long, lank, ill-favored, a white
+scrawny beard, stained from the corners of his mouth with tobacco juice;
+but for all, I'd pick him out of a thousand for an orderly. He was
+always there, and his rifle--he always carried his own--a small bore,
+heavy barrel, rough-looking piece, never missed.
+
+"As the old woman was talking from the window, a troop of women, from
+eighteen to forty years old--but I am a better judge of horses' ages
+than women's; they slip us up on that pint too often--came rushing out
+of the door. They made all kinds of inquiries, but I set my men quietly
+to work loading the wood.
+
+"'Now, Captain, you shan't take that wood,' said a well-developed
+little, rather pretty, black-haired woman, but with those peculiar black
+eyes, full of the devil, that you only see among the Rebels, and that
+the Almighty seems to have set in like lanterns in lighthouses to show
+that their bearers are not to be trusted. 'You shan't take that wood!'
+raising her voice to a scream. The men worked on quietly, and I
+overlooked the work.
+
+"'You dirty, greasy-looking Yankee,' said another, 'born in some
+northern poor-house.'
+
+"'And both parents died in jail, I'll bet.'
+
+"'If our Jim was only here, he'd handle the cowardly set in less time
+than one of them could pick up that limb.'
+
+"'You chicken thief, you come by it honestly. Your father was a thief
+before you, and your mother--'
+
+"This last roused me. I could hear nothing bad of her from man or woman.
+
+"'You she-devil,' said I, turning to her, 'not one word more.' She
+turned toward the house.
+
+"But they annoyed the men, and I concluded to keep them still.
+
+"'Sergeant,' said I, addressing the orderly, and nearing the house, the
+women close at my heels. 'Sergeant, as our regiment will camp near here
+to-morrow, we might as well look out for a company hospital. How big is
+that house?'
+
+"'Large enough, Captain; thirty by fifty at least.'
+
+"'How many rooms?'
+
+"'About three, I reckon, on first floor, and I guess the upper story is
+all in one, from its looks through the window. Plenty of room. Bully
+place, and what is more, plenty of ladies to nurse the poor boys.
+
+"The noses of the women not naturally cocked, became upturned at this
+last remark of the sergeant's. But they had become silent, and looked
+anxious.
+
+"'Sergeant, here's paper and pencil, just note down the names of the
+sick, and the rooms we'll put them in, so as to avoid confusion.'
+
+"The sergeant ran the sharp end of the pencil half an inch in his mouth,
+and on the palm of his horny hand commenced the list, talking all the
+while aloud--slowly, just as if writing--'Let me see. My mem'y isn't
+more than an inch long, and there's a blasted lot of 'em.
+
+"'Jim Smith, Bob Riley, Larry Clark, got small-pox; Larry all broke out
+big as old quarters, put 'em in back room down stairs.' The women got
+pale, but small-pox had been common in those parts. 'George Johnson,
+Bill Davis, got the mumps.' 'The mumps, Sally, the mumps, them's what
+killed George, and they're so catchin'--whispered one of the women--and
+continued the sergeant, 'Bill Thatcher, George Clifton the
+chicken-pox.' 'O Lord, the chicken-pox,' said another woman, 'it killed
+my two cousins before they were in the army a week.'--'Put them four,'
+said the sergeant, 'in the middle room down stairs. Save the kitchen for
+cookin', and up stairs put Jim Williams, Spooky Johnson, Tom Hardy, Dick
+Cramer, and the little cook boy; all got the measles.' 'The measles!'
+screamed out half-a-dozen together. 'Good-Lord, we'll be killed in a
+week.' 'They say,' said another black eye, 'that that crack Mississippi
+Brigade took the measles at Harper's Ferry, and died like flies. They
+had to gather them from the bushes, and all over. Brother Tom told me.
+He said our boys were worked nearly to death digging graves.'
+
+"'That was a good thing,' observed the sergeant.
+
+"'You beast!' said the little old woman advancing towards him, and
+shaking her fist in his face.
+
+"'And what will become of us women?' screamed she.
+
+"'A pretty question for an old lady; we calculate that you ladies will
+wait on the sick,' drily remarked the sergeant.
+
+"At this the women, thinking their case hopeless, with downcast looks
+quietly filed into the house.
+
+"The boys by this time had about done loading the teams. All the while I
+had watched the manners of the women closely and the house, and I came
+to the conclusion that it would pay to make a visit inside.
+
+"A guard was placed on the outside, and telling the sergeant and two men
+to follow, I entered. It was all quiet below, but we found when we had
+reached the top of the steps, and stood in the middle of the big room up
+stairs, the women in great confusion, some in a corner of the room, and
+a few sitting on the beds. Among the latter, sitting as we boys used to
+say on her hunkers, with hands clasped about her knees, was the old
+woman. Besides the beds the only furniture in the room was a large,
+roughly made, double-doored wardrobe that stood in one corner.
+
+"We hadn't time to look around before the old woman screeched out--
+
+"'You won't disturb my private fixin's, will you?'
+
+"'I rather think not,' slowly said the sergeant, giving her at the same
+time a comical look.
+
+"Notwithstanding repeated and tearful assurances that there was nothing
+there, that the men had taken off all the arms, hadn't left lead enough
+to mend a hole in the bottom of the coffee-pot, etc., etc., we began to
+search the beds, commencing at one corner. There were two beds between
+us and the old woman's, and although we shook ticks and bolsters, and
+made otherwise close examination, we discovered nothing beyond the
+population usually found in such localities in Western Virginia.
+
+"The old woman was fidgety. Her face, that at two reflections would have
+changed muscatel into crab apple vinegar, was more than usually
+wrinkled. 'O Lord, nothing here,' groaned she, as she sat with her back
+to the head-board. She did not budge an inch as we commenced at her bed.
+
+"The sergeant had gone to the head-board, I to the foot. I saw a twinkle
+in his eye as he turned over the rough comfort, his hand reached
+down--he drew it up gradually, and the old woman slid as gradually from
+the lock to the muzzle of a long Kentucky rifle. 'O Lord,' groaned she,
+as she keeled over on her right side at the foot of the bed.
+
+"A glow of admiration overspread the Sergeant's face as he looked at
+that rifle.
+
+"'Well, I swow, old woman, is this what you call a private fixin'?'
+said the Sergeant. 'A queer bed-fellow you've got; and just look,
+Captain,' said he, trying the ramrod, 'loaded, capped, and half cocked.'
+
+"The heavy manner in which the old lady fell over satisfied me that we
+hadn't all the armory, and I directed her to leave the bed and stand on
+the floor.
+
+"'Can't, can I, Ann?' addressing one of the women.
+
+"'No, marm can't, she is helpless.'
+
+"'Got the rheumatics, had 'em a year and better,' groaned the old woman.
+
+"'Hadn't 'em when you shook your fist under my nose in the yard,' said
+the Sergeant. 'Get off the bed;' catching the old woman by the arm, he
+helped her off. She straightened up with difficulty, holding her clothes
+at the hips with both hands. 'Hold up your hands,' said the Sergeant. He
+was about to assist her, when not relishing that, she lifted them up; as
+she did so, there was a heavy rattling sound on the floor. The old woman
+jumped about a foot from the floor clear out of a well filled pillow
+cushion, dancing and yelling like an Indian. Some hardware must have
+struck her toe and made her forget her rheumatism.
+
+"That bag had two Colt's navy size, two pistols English make, with all
+the trappings for both kinds, and two dozen boxes of best make English
+water proof caps.
+
+"'Old woman,' said the Sergeant with a chuckle, 'your private fixin's as
+you call 'em, are worth hunting for.'
+
+"But the old woman had reached the side of a bed, and was too much
+engaged in holding her toe, to notice the remark.
+
+"The other beds were searched, but with no success. I had noticed while
+the old woman was hopping about a short fat woman getting behind some
+taller ones in the corner and arranging her clothing. The old woman's
+contrivance made me think the corner worth looking at.
+
+"The women sulkily and slowly gave way, and another pillow-case was
+found on the floor, from which a brace of pistols, one pair of long
+cowhide riding boots, three heavy-bladed bowie knives, and some smaller
+matters, were obtained.
+
+"The wardrobe was the only remaining thing, and on it as a centre the
+women had doubled their columns.
+
+"'Oh, Captain, don't,' said several at once beseechingly, 'we're all
+single women, and that has our frocks and fixin's in it,' as I touched
+the wardrobe.
+
+"'As far as I've seed there is not much difference between married
+women's fixin's and single ones,' coolly said the Sergeant.
+
+"'There is not one of us married, Captain.'
+
+"'Sorry for that,' said the Sergeant, leisurely eyeing the women. 'If
+you'd take advice from a Yankee, some of you had better hurry up.'
+
+"The women were indignant, but smothered it, having ascertained that a
+passionate policy would not avail.
+
+"By this time one of the men had succeeded with his bayonet in forcing a
+door. The Sergeant had laid his hand on the door, when a pretty face,
+lit up with those same devilish black eyes, was looking into his half
+winningly, and a pair of small hands were clasping his arm. The
+Sergeant's head gradually fell as if to hear what she had to say, when
+magnetism, a desire to try experiments, or call it what you will, as
+'love,' although said to 'rule the camp,' has little really to do with
+the monotony of actual camp scenes, or the horrors of the field
+itself,--at any rate the Sergeant's head dropped suddenly,--a loud
+smack, followed instantly by the dull sound of a blow,--and the
+Sergeant gently rubbed an already blackening eye, while the woman was
+engaged in drawing her sleeve across her mouth. Like enough some tobacco
+juice went with the sleeve, for the corners of the Sergeant's mouth were
+regular sluices for that article.
+
+"The Sergeant's eye did not prevent him from opening the door, however.
+
+"'Well, I declare, brother Jim's forgot his clothes and sword,' said one
+of the women, manifesting much surprise.
+
+"'Do you call that brother Jim's clothes?' said the Sergeant, grasping a
+petticoat, above which appeared the guard of a cavalry sabre, and
+holding both up to view. 'I tell you it's no use goin' on,' said the
+Sergeant, somewhat more earnestly, his eye may be smarting a little,
+'we're bound to go through it if it takes the hair off.' The women
+squatted about on the beds, down-hearted enough.
+
+"And through it we went, getting five more sabres and belts, and two
+Sharp's rifles complete in that side, and a cavalry saddle, holsters
+with army pistols, bridles, and a rifled musket, in the other side; all
+bran new. There was nothing in the lower story or cellar.
+
+"When I showed Rosy our plunder--and it hadn't to be taken to his tent
+either--when he heard of it, he came out as anxious and pleased as any
+of the boys,--he was a General interested in our luck more than his own
+pay,--he clapped me on the shoulder right before my men, and all the
+officers and men looking on, and said: 'Captain, you're a regular trump.
+Three cheers, boys, for the Captain and company.' And as he started them
+himself, the boys did give 'em, too. 'Captain, you'll not be
+forgotten--be easy on that point.' And I was easy, until a fit of
+sickness that I got put my fortune for the time out of Rosy's hands. The
+men never forgot that trip. The Sergeant often said though, it was the
+only trip he wasn't altogether pleased with, because, I suppose, his
+black eye was a standing joke."
+
+Just then, a sentinel's hail and the reply, "Grand Rounds," "Field
+Officer of the day," hurried the Captain off, and the crowd to their
+posts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+_The Reconnoissance--Shepherdstown--Punch and Patriotism--Private Tom on
+West Point and Southern Sympathy--The Little Irish Corporal on John
+Mitchel--A Skirmish--Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and
+Chaplain--Battle of Falling Waters not intended--Story of the Little
+Irish Corporal--Patterson's Folly, or Treason._
+
+
+An old German writer has said that "six months are sufficient to
+accustom an individual to any change in life." As he might fairly be
+supposed to have penned this for German readers and with the fixed
+habits and feelings of a German, if true at all, it ought to hold good
+the world over. As we are more particularly interested in camps at
+present, we venture the assertion that six weeks will make a soldier
+weary of any camp. With our Sharpsburg camp, however, perhaps this
+feeling was assisted by the consciousness so frequently manifested in
+the conversation of the men that the army should be on the move.
+
+Hundreds of relatives and friends had taken advantage of the proximity
+of the camp to a railroad station to pay us a visit, and with them of
+course came eatables--not in the army rations--and delicacies of all
+kinds prepared by thoughtful heads and willing hands at home. Not
+unfrequently the marquees of the officers were occupied by their
+families, who, in their enjoyment of the novelties of camp life, the
+drills, and dress parades of the regiment, treasured up for home
+consumption, brilliant recollections of the sunny side of war. All this,
+to say nothing of the scenery, the shade of the wood, that from the
+peculiar position of the camp, so gratefully from early noon extended
+itself, until at the hour for dress parade the regiment could come to
+the usual "parade rest" entirely in the shade. But the roads were good,
+the weather favorable, the troops effective, and the inactivity was a
+"ghost that would not down" in the sight of men daily making sacrifices
+for the speedy suppression of the Rebellion. The matter was constantly
+recurring for discussion in the shelter tent as well as in the marquees,
+in all its various forms. A great nation playing at war when its capital
+was threatened, and its existence endangered. A struggle in which inert
+power was upon one side, and all the earnestness of deadly hatred and
+blind fanaticism upon the other. An enemy vulnerable in many ways, and
+no matter how many loyal lives were lost, money expended by the
+protraction of the war, but to be assailed in one. But why multiply? Ten
+thousand reasons might be assigned why a military leader, without an
+aggressive policy of warfare, unwilling to employ fully the resources
+committed to him, should not succeed in the suppression of a Rebellion.
+The nation suffered much in the treason that used its high position to
+cloak the early rebel movement to arms, and delayed our own
+preparations; but more in the incapacity or half-heartedness that made
+miserable use of the rich materials so spontaneously furnished.
+
+In the improvement of the Regiment the delay at the Sharpsburg camp was
+not lost. The limited ground was well used, and Company and Battalion
+drills steadily persevered in, brought the Regiment to a proficiency
+rarely noticed in regiments much longer in the field.
+
+"Three days' cooked rations, sixty rounds of ammunition, and under arms
+at four in the morning. How do you like the smack of that, Tom?"
+
+"It smacks of war," says Tom, "and it's high time." The first speaker
+had doffed the gown of the student in his senior year, greatly against
+the wishes of parents and friends, to don the livery of Uncle Sam. One
+would scarcely have recognised in the rough sunburned countenance,
+surmounted by a closely fitting cap, once blue but now almost red, and
+not from the blood of any battle-field--in the course slovenly worn blue
+blouse pantaloons, unevenly suspended, and wide unblacked army shoes,
+the well dressed, graceful accomplished student that commended himself
+to almost universal admiration among the young ladies of his
+acquaintance. The second speaker, thinking that a more opportune war had
+never occurred to demand the silence of the law amid resounding arms,
+had left his desk in an attorney's office, shelved his Blackstone, and
+with a courage that never flinched in the field of strife or in toilsome
+marches where it can perhaps be subjected to a severer test, had
+thoroughly shown that the resolution with which he committed himself to
+the war was one upon which no backward step would be taken. They were
+old friends, and fast messmates. Their little dog-tent, as the shelter
+tents were called, had heard from each many an earnest wish that their
+letters might smell of powder.
+
+The feeling then with which George uttered this piece of news, and the
+joy of Tom as he heard it, can be appreciated.
+
+"What authority have you, George?"
+
+"Old Pigeon-hole's. I heard him, while on duty about his Head-quarters
+to-day, tell a Colonel, that the move had been ordered; that the War
+Department had been getting uncommonly anxious, and that it interfered
+with certain examinations he was making into very important papers."
+
+"I'll warrant it. I would like to see any move in a forward direction
+that would not interfere with some arrangement of his. His moves are on
+paper, and a paper General is just about as valuable to the country as a
+paper blockade."
+
+"Is the movement general?"
+
+"I think it is."
+
+"Of course then it interferes. George, did you ever hear any patriotism
+about those Head-quarters? You have been a great deal about them."
+
+"No, but I have seen a good deal of punch in that neighborhood."
+
+"I'll warrant it--more punch than patriotism. A great state of affairs
+this. There are too many of these half-hearted Head-quarters in the
+army. They ought to be cleaned out, and I believe that before this
+campaign is through it will be done. If it is not done, the country is
+lost."
+
+"Country lost! why of course; that is almost admitted about that
+establishment. They say we may be able to pen them up, and as they don't
+say any more they must think that is about all. I heard a young
+officer--a Regular--who seems to be intimate up there say: that there
+was no use of talking--that men that fought the way the Southerners--he
+didn't use the word Rebels--did, could not be conquered,--that they
+were too much for our men, etc., etc. I could have kicked the
+shoulder-strapped coward or traitor, may be both, but if I had, old
+Pigeon-hole would have had a military execution for the benefit of the
+Volunteers in short order. And then he strutted, talking treason and
+squirting tobacco juice--and all the while our Government supporting the
+scoundrel. West Point was on his outside, but his conversation and
+vacant look told me plainly enough that outside of a Government position
+the squirt had not brains enough to gain a day's subsistence. But he's
+one of Pigey's 'my Regulars,' and to us Volunteers he can put himself on
+his dignity with a '_Procul_, _Procul_, _este Profani_.'"
+
+"George, don't stir me up on that subject any more. I get half mad when
+I think that Uncle Sam's worst enemies are those of his own household.
+We had better anticipate the Captain's order about this in our
+preparations, and not be up half the night."
+
+"Even so, Tom."
+
+George was correct; as to a move at least, for early dawn saw the
+Division and a detachment from another Division, en route to the river.
+There was the usual quiet in the camps along which they passed, showing
+that George was mistaken as to the move being general. The troops
+marching through a winding and wooded defile, passed the deservedly well
+known Brigade of General Meagher. "Here's Ould Ireland Boys," said the
+little Irish Corporal, pointing, as his face glowed with pride, to the
+flag adorned with "The Harp of Ould Ireland, and the Shamrock so green,"
+the emblems of the Emerald Isle.
+
+"Their General is an Irishman thrue to the sod, none of your rinegade
+spalpeens like John Mitchel--fighting for slave-holders in Ameriky, and
+against the Lords and Dukes in Ould Ireland, and the slave-holders as
+Father Mahan tould me the worst of the two, more aristocratic,
+big-feeling, and tyrannical than the English nobility. He said, too,
+that the blackguard could never visit the ould sod again unless he
+landed in the night-time, and hid himself by day in a bog up to his
+eyes, and even then the Father said he believed the blissed mimory of
+St. Patrick,
+
+          'Who drove the Frogs into the Bogs,
+          And banished all the Varmint,'
+
+would clean him out after the rist of the varmin."
+
+"Three cheers for the Irish Brigade" greeted the Corporal's remarks.
+
+The troops crossed with difficulty and delay at the only ford--and
+wondered with reason at the activity of the Rebels in having transported
+across not only their army and baggage, but hundreds if not thousands of
+their dead and wounded. The road winding around the high rocks on the
+Virginia side, must have been in more peaceful times a favorite drive
+for the gentry of the neighborhood. Shepherdstown itself adorns a most
+commanding position. On the occasion of this Union visit its inhabitants
+appeared intensely Secesh. Not so in the early history of the rebellion;
+when Patterson's column "dragged its slow length along" through the
+valley of the Shenandoah. Scouting parties then saw Union flags from
+many a window. True, they streamed from dwellings owned by the
+merchants, mechanics, and laborers, the real muscle of the country; but
+this was true of most of the towns of the Border States, and more early
+energetic action in affording these classes protection would have
+secured us the aid of their strong hands. As it was, these resources
+were in great measure frittered away--gradually drawn by what appeared
+an irresistible influence into the vortex of the Rebellion--or scattered
+wanderingly through the Loyal States, and worn down and exhausted in the
+support of dependent and outcast families.
+
+Sharpsburg was greatly altered. The yellow Rebel Flag designated almost
+every other building as a Hospital. Their surgeons in grey pompously
+paraded the streets. As the troops marched through, they were subjected
+to almost every description of insult. One interesting group of Rebel
+petticoated humanity standing in front of premises that would not have
+passed inspection by one of our Pennsylvania Dutch housewives, held
+their noses by way of showing contempt.
+
+"Guess you have to do that, about them diggins. When did you scrub
+last?" said a bright-eyed officer's servant, whom a few years' service
+as a news-boy had taught considerable shrewdness.
+
+To annoy others "My Maryland" and "John Brown" were sung by the men.
+Around a toll-house at the west end of town, occupied by an old lady
+whose husband had been expelled with a large number of other patriotic
+residents, had congregated some wives of exiled loyal husbands, who were
+not afraid to avow their attachment for the old Union, by words of
+encouragement and waving of handkerchiefs. They were backed by a reserve
+force of negroes of both sexes, whose generous exhibition of polished
+ivories, to say the least, did not represent any great displeasure at
+the appearance of the troops.
+
+"There are the Reserves," said one of the boys, pointing to where the
+negroes stood.
+
+"Yes, and if they were called in the issue of this Rebellion would be
+speedy and favorable," said a Captain in musical tones, "and I can't
+think but that this costly child's play will drive the nation into their
+use much sooner than many expect. Let them understand that they are the
+real beneficiaries of this war, and they will not stay their hands. And
+why shouldn't we use them? 'They are one of the means that God and
+nature have placed in our hands,' and old Virginia can't object to that
+doctrine."
+
+"But, Captain," said his First Lieutenant, "would you fight alongside of
+a darkie?"
+
+"Would you drive a darkie away if he came to assist you in a struggle
+for life?"
+
+"Yes, but we have men enough without their aid."
+
+"You forget, Lieutenant, that, as matters now are, we have them fighting
+against us."
+
+"How so?"
+
+"They raise the crops that feed the Rebel army. They are just as much,
+perhaps not as directly, but just as really fighting against us as the
+founders who cast their cannon. And as to fighting alongside of them,
+they may have quite as many prejudices against fighting alongside of us.
+There is no necessity of interfering with either. Organize colored
+regiments; appoint colored line officers if efficient, and white field
+and staff officers, until they attain sufficient proficiency for
+command. As to their fighting qualities, military records attest them
+abundantly. The shrewd 'nephew of his uncle' has used them for years."
+
+The earnest argument of the Captain made a deep impression upon the men.
+The desperation of our case, depressed finances, heavy hospital lists,
+and many other causes, independently of abstract justice, are fast
+removing that question beyond the pale of prejudice.
+
+A halt was ordered, and the men rested on the sward that bordered the
+hard pike, and in the immediate neighborhood of the village cemetery. It
+was literally crowded with graves, many of them fresh. Large additions
+had been made from surrounding fields, and they too were closely taken
+up by ridges covering the dead of Antietam.
+
+The surrounding country had suffered little from the ravages of war.
+Visited occasionally by scouting parties--principally cavalry--of both
+sides, there had been none of the occupation by large bodies of troops,
+which levels fences, destroys crops, and speedily gives the most fertile
+of countries the seeming barrenness of the desert. The valley had a
+reputation that ran back to an ante-Revolutionary date for magnificence
+of scenery and fertility of soil. Washington, with all the enthusiasm of
+ardent youth, paid it glowing encomiums in his field-notes of the
+Fairfax surveys. In later times, when the destinies of our struggling
+colonies rested upon his ample shoulders, the leaders of the faction
+opposed to him--for great and good as he was, he had jealous, bitter,
+and malignant enemies--settled a few miles beyond Shepherdstown, at what
+has since been known as Leetown. The farms, with few exceptions, had
+nothing of the slovenly air, dilapidated, worn-out appearance, that
+characterized other parts of Virginia. Upon inquiry we found that the
+large landowners were in the habit of procuring tenants from the lower
+counties of Pennsylvania, and that the thrift and close cultivation were
+really imported. In the course of time these tenants, with their
+customary acquisitiveness, became landowners themselves, and their farms
+were readily distinguishable by the farm buildings, and particularly by
+the large substantial red bank barns.
+
+The troops moved on to a wood, skirting either side of the road, and
+were thrown into line of battle. The country was gently rolling, and the
+woods in front that crowned the summit of the low ridges were shelled
+before advancing. Occasionally Rebel horsemen could be seen rapidly
+riding from one wood to another, making observations from some
+commanding point.
+
+In line of battle by Brigade, flanked by skirmishers, the advance was
+made. To the troops this, although toilsome, was unusually exciting.
+Through woods, fields of corn whose tall tops concealed even the mounted
+officers, and made the men, like quails in standing grain, be guided by
+the direction of the sound of the command, rather than by the touch of
+elbows to the centre,--over the frequent croppings out of ledges of
+rock, through the little streams of this plentifully watered country,
+the movement slowly progressed. They had not advanced far when a shell
+screamed over their heads, uncomfortably close to the Surgeon and
+Chaplain, some fifty yards in the rear, and mangled awfully a straggler
+at least half a mile further back. As may be supposed, his fate was a
+standing warning against straggling for the balance of the campaign.
+
+Notwithstanding further compliments from the rebels, who appeared to
+have our range, a roar of laughter greeted the dexterity with which the
+Chaplain and Surgeon ducked and dismounted at the sound of the first
+shell. Of about a size, and both small men, they fairly rolled from
+their horses. The boys had it that the little Dutch Doctor grabbed at
+his horse's ear, or rather where it ought to have been; as the horse was
+formerly in the Rebel service, and was picked up by the Doctor after the
+battle of Antietam, minus an ear, lost perhaps through a cut from an
+awkward sabre, and missing it fell upon his hands and knees in front of
+the horse's feet.
+
+As the shells grew more frequent and direct in range, the men were
+ordered to halt and lie down. The field officers dismounted, and were
+joined by the Chaplain and Doctor leading their horses.
+
+"Colonel, I no ride that horse," said the Doctor, sputtering and
+brushing the dust off his clothes.
+
+"Why not, Doctor?"
+
+"Too high--very big--" touching the top of the shoulder of the bony
+beast, and almost on tip-toe to do it, "had much fall, ground struck me
+hard," continued he, his eyes snapping all the while.
+
+"Well, Doctor," remarked one of the other field officers, "we have told
+you all along that if you ever got in range with that horse, your life
+would hardly be worth talking about."
+
+"They not know him," anxiously said the Doctor.
+
+"Of course they know him. He has the best and plainest ear-mark in the
+world."
+
+"Pretty close shoot that, anyhow."
+
+The result of this conversation was, that in the further movement the
+Doctor led his horse during the day.
+
+The firing ceased with no damage, save the bruises of the Doctor, and
+those received by our tonguey little Corporal, who asserted that the
+windage of a shell knocked him off a fence. As he fell into a stone
+heap, it is more than probable that he had some good reason for the
+movement--besides, why cannot Corporals suffer from wounds of that kind,
+frequently so fashionable among officers of higher grade?
+
+The onward movement was resumed. In the course of half an hour the
+cannonading again opened, interspersed with occasional volleys of
+musketry. The rattling of musketry became incessant. Advancing under
+cover of rocky bluffs, the shells passed harmlessly over the Brigade. We
+soon ascertained that the Rebels had made a stand at a point where our
+advance, from the character of the country, necessarily narrowed into
+the compass of a strip of meadow-land. Here a brigade of Rebel infantry
+were drawn up in line of battle. Their batteries posted on a neighboring
+height, were guided by signals, the country not admitting of extended
+observation. The contest was brief. The gleam of the bayonets as they
+fell for the charge, broke the Rebel line, and they retired in
+considerable confusion to the wood in their rear. Our batteries soon
+shelled them from those quarters, and the advance continued--the
+skirmishers of both sides keeping up a rattling fire. Some Rebel
+earthworks were passed, and late in the afternoon the track of the
+Baltimore and Ohio railroad was crossed. The Rebels, before leaving, had
+done their utmost to complete the destruction of that much abused road.
+At intervals of every one hundred yards, piles of ties surmounted by
+rails were upon fire. These were thrown down by our men. About half a
+mile beyond the road, in a finely sodded valley, the troops were halted
+for the night, pickets posted, and the men prepared their meals closely
+in the rear of their stacks. The night was a pleasant one. An open air
+encampment upon such a night is one of the finest phases of a soldier's
+life. Meals over, the events of the day were discussed, or such matters
+as proved of interest to the different groups.
+
+One group we must not pass unnoticed. The majority lounged lazily upon
+the grass, some squatted upon their knapsacks, while a large stone was
+given by common consent to a tall, fine-looking Lieutenant, the
+principal officer present.
+
+"Corporal," said he, addressing the little Irish Corporal, "do you know
+how near we are to Martinsburg?"
+
+"Faith I don't, Lieutenant."
+
+"I do not know the exact distance myself, but we are not over three or
+four miles from the road that we took when we guarded the ammunition
+train from Martinsburg to Charlestown."
+
+"Oh, it's the ould First ye are spaking about, is it? Ov coorse I
+ricollect Martinsburg, and the markit-house where I guarded the fifty
+nagurs that Gineral Patterson had ordered to be arrested for having
+stripes on their pantaloons, Uncle Sam's buttons on their caps, and
+belts with these big brass U. S. plates on. Oh, but it was a swate
+crowd. The poor divils were crowded like cattle on cars, and it was one
+of the hot smothering nights. I couldn't help thinkin', that by and by,
+if our armies didn't move faster, the nagurs would have little trouble
+gettin' into uniforms. They have a nat'ral concate about such things.
+One poor fellow rolled the whites of his eyes awfully, and almost cried
+when I ordered him out of his red breeches."
+
+"The day has not come yet, and need not," rejoined the Lieutenant, "if
+our generals do their duty. Don't you recollect how we were hurried from
+Frederick, and after marching seven miles out of the way, made good time
+for all to Williamsport--how bayonets appeared to glisten upon every
+road leading into the town; and then our crossing the river, the band
+all the while playing 'The Star-spangled Banner,' and the march we made
+to Martinsburg, passing over the ground where the battle of Falling
+Waters had but a few days before been fought? If that battle had been
+followed up as it should have been, Johnson would never have reached
+Bull Run."
+
+"Be jabers! do you know, Lieutenant, that that fight was all a mistake
+upon our part? Shure, our ginerals niver intended it."
+
+A laugh, with the inquiry "how he knew that?" followed.
+
+"Didn't I hear a Big Gineral, that I was acting as orderly for while in
+Martinsburg--for they made orderlies of corporals thim days--tell a
+richly-dressed old lady, 'That it was our policy to teach our misguided
+Southern brethren, by an imposing show of strength, how hopeless it
+would be to fight against the Government.' The lady said, 'That would
+save much bloodshed, would become a Christian nation, and would return
+them as friends to their old way of thinking. 'Yes, madam!' said the
+Gineral, 'there is no bitter feeling in our breasts,' clasping his
+breast. 'The masses south will soon see their country surrounded by
+volunteers in great numbers, and that the war, if protracted, must
+involve them all in ruin. When the war is over, madam, fanatics on both
+sides can be hung.'
+
+"'That was a dreadful affair at Falling Waters, General,' said the lady,
+with a strange twinkle in her eyes.
+
+"'Yes, madam,' replied the General, coloring up to his ears, 'a blunder
+of some of our volunteer officers. Ordinary military prudence made us
+send forward some force to reconnoitre before crossing the main army.
+These troops were to fall back if the enemy appeared in force. Not
+understanding their orders, or carried away by the excitement of the
+moment, they engaged the enemy with the unfortunate results to which you
+allude.'
+
+"Av it would have been proper for a corporal, I would have asked the
+Gineral what Johnny Reb would do while we were taching him all that.
+Thim's the Gineral's exact words, for I paid particular attention. I put
+them thegither with what I had heard from a Wisconsin boy, and I got the
+whole history of that fight."
+
+"Let's have it," shouted the crowd, now considerably increased, "at
+once!"
+
+"Well, you see, they were sent forward to reconnoitre, as the Gineral
+said, and there was a Wisconsin regiment of bear hunters and the like,
+and a Pennsylvania regiment of deer hunters and Susquehannah raftsmen
+pretty well forward. These Wisconsin chaps, in dead earnest, brought
+their rifles along all the way from Wisconsin, and, like the
+Susquehannah fellows, they couldn't kape hands off the trigger if there
+was any game about.
+
+"Well, they got to Falling Waters without stirring up anything; you
+recollect, Lieutenant, where that rebel officer's house was burned down,
+and then the battery that was along with them, seeing some
+suspicious-looking Grey Backs dodging in and out of a wood, let them
+have a few round of shells just to see whether they were in force or
+not, according to orders. The Rebs made tracks for a low piece of ground
+behind a ridge, and then formed line of battle. Our men, with a yell,
+went forward, and when they saw the Rebs in line, these two Colonels,
+thinking they had been sent out to fight, and that their men didn't
+carry guns for nothing, ordered them to fire; and then they ordered them
+to load again, in order to relave their hips as much as possible from
+the load of ammunition; and then they fired again; and then, gittin'
+excited, and thinkin' this work too slow, and that it wouldn't do to
+take such bright bayonets home, they ordered a charge, and cheering,
+yelling, and howling, our boys went at the Rebs. The Rebs didn't stand
+to meet them, but fell back behind a barn. The batteries burned
+that,--and then they tried to form line again, but no use. As soon as
+our fellows gave the yell, they were off like all possessed. They had
+prepared to run by tearing the fences down; and then it was trying to
+form line, and breaking as soon as our fellows howled a little, all the
+way for five long miles to Martinsburg; and the last our boys saw of the
+Rebs was their straight coat-tails at the south end of the town. And
+that was the whole battle of Falling Waters; and may be Ould Patterson
+wouldn't have got to Martinsburg if them Colonels had reported the Rebs
+in force, and not got excited.
+
+"But how did you hear all this? You forget that part of it."
+
+"And couldn't you let that go? I thought I could concale that.
+
+"Well, you know, Lieutenant, our ould Colonel boarded at the Brick
+Hotel, along the Railroad, above where the long strings of locomotives
+were burned, as the Gineral says, by our 'misguided southern friends;'
+and I was about there considerably on duty. One afternoon, a
+jolly-looking little chap, one of the Wisconsin boys, and one after my
+own heart--and he proved it, too, by trating me to several drinks--came
+along with a Rebel Artillery officer's coat under his arm. And we looked
+at the coat, and talked and drank, and drank and talked, until the
+Wisconsin chappy put it on, just to show me how the Rebel officer looked
+in it. It was a fine grey, trimmed with gold lace and scarlet, and the
+Wisconsin chappy looked gay in it, barring the sleeves were several
+inches too long, and the waist buttons came down nearly a foot too far,
+and it was too big round the waist. And he showed me after every drink
+what he did and what the Officer did,--and, to tell the plain truth, we
+got a drop too much,--and the Wisconsin chappy got turning back-hand
+springs against the side of the hotel, and I tried to do the same, to
+the great sport of the crowd. But it didn't last long. A corporal's
+guard took--or rather carried--us to the guard-house, and towards
+morning, when we sobered up, he tould me the whole story."
+
+"Pretty well put together, Terry."
+
+"And the blissed truth, ivery word of it."
+
+The night was wearing away--work before them in the morning--and the
+group dispersed for their blankets, from which we will not disturb them
+until the succeeding chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+_Reconnoissance concluded. What we Saw and What we didn't See, and what
+the Good Public Read--Pigeon-hole Generalship and the Press--The
+Preacher Lieutenant and how he Recruited--Comparative Merits of Black
+Union Men and White Rebels--A Ground Blast, and its effect upon a
+Pigeon-hole General--Staff Officers Striking a Snag in the Western
+Virginia Captain--Why the People have a right to expect active Army
+Movements--Red Tape and the Sick List--Pigeon-holing at Division
+Head-quarters._
+
+
+In the misty morning arms were taken and the forward resumed. Occasional
+Rebel corpses passed showed the work of our sharpshooters. In a short
+time the ground again prevented the movement in line of battle, and the
+troops marched by the flank over a road well wooded on each side, until
+they reached what proved to be the farthest point made by the
+reconnoissance--a large open plateau, bounded on the north and west by a
+wooded ridge to which it gradually rose, and which was said to border
+the Oppequan. On the south, at an average distance of five hundred yards
+from the road, was a strip of timber land. Slightly west by south, but
+upon the north side of the road, was a rise of ground, in the rear of
+which, but upon the south side of the road, were a farmer's house and
+out-buildings. The troops pursued their march until the head of the
+column arrived opposite the house. Suspicious-looking horsemen were
+discovered on the edge of the woods that crowned the ridge. The order
+was given that the troops should leave the road and take cover on its
+south side, a position not commanded by the ridge. The order was not
+executed before a Rebel officer, on a white-tailed dun horse, the tail
+particularly conspicuous against the dark background of the wood, was
+observed signalling to the extreme right of what was now supposed to be
+the Rebel line. Almost instantly some half a dozen pieces of artillery
+were placed in position, at various points on the brow of the circular
+ridge, completely commanding, in fact flanking our position. Our troops,
+however, were not disturbed, although every instant expecting a salute
+from the batteries, as the range was easy and direct. While the troops
+were being placed in position behind the house the batteries were posted
+on the rise. A few hours passed in this position. The Rebel batteries in
+plain view, horsemen continually emerging and disappearing in the wood.
+Was it the force that we had driven before us? or were the Rebels in
+force upon that ridge, making the Oppequan their line of defence? Better
+ground upon which to be attacked could not be chosen. The long distance
+to be traversed under fire of any number of converging batteries, would
+have slaughtered men by the thousands. But again, if the Rebels were in
+force, why did they not attack us? Outflanking us was easy. With a
+superior force our retreat could easily be intercepted, and if we
+escaped at all, it would be with heavy loss. Their batteries threatened,
+but no firing. All was quiet, save the noise made by the men in
+stripping an orchard in their immediate front, and the commands of their
+officers in ordering them back to the ranks.
+
+The quiet was provoking, and all manner of discussion as to the Rebel
+force, movements, etc., was indulged in. Many contended that they were
+but threatening--others, that they were in force, that was their line of
+defence, and the plateau in front their battle-ground. This decision the
+General in command seems to have arrived at, as the flaming telegrams in
+the Dailies, in the course of a day or two, announced that the Rebels
+were discovered in great force, strongly posted in a most defensible
+position. After the lapse of an hour or two, the order for the homeward
+march was given, and strange to say, that although marching by the flank
+the last man had disappeared from their view, behind the cover of the
+wood, before they opened fire. They then commenced shelling the woods
+vigorously, and continued firing at a respectful distance, doing no
+damage, until night set in. In the course of the afternoon it commenced
+raining, and continued steadily throughout the night. The troops
+encamped for the night in Egyptian darkness, and what was worse, in a
+meadow fairly deluged with water.
+
+"Well, what does all this mean?" inquired one of a crowd, huddled
+together, hooded by blanket and oil-cloth, protecting themselves as best
+they could from the falling rain, for sleep was out of question to all
+but the fortunate few who can slumber in puddles.
+
+"What does it all mean, Charlie? Why it means a blind upon Uncle Abraham
+and his good people. That's what it means."
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, I am surprised that a man of your usual reserve and
+correct conversation, should talk in that style about our commander."
+
+"Sergeant, it is high time that not only individuals, whether reserved
+or not, but the people at large should denounce this delay that is
+wearing out the life of the nation. Weeks have passed since the battle
+of Antietam, and after repeated urgings on the part of the President,
+and repeated promises on the part of our commander, we have this
+beggarly apology for a movement. Yes, sir, apology for a movement.
+To-morrow's Dailies will tell in flaming capitals, how the Rebels were
+posted in large force in a strong position, and in line of battle upon
+the Oppequan, intimating thereby that further delay will be unavoidable
+to make our army equal to a movement. Now this humbugging an earnest
+people is unfair, unworthy of a great commander, and if he be humbugged
+himself again as with the Quaker guns at Manassas, the sooner the
+country knows it the better for its credit and safety. How can any
+living man tell that the batteries we saw to-day upon the ridge, are not
+the batteries we drove before us yesterday? The probability is that they
+are."
+
+The speaker, as intimated by the Sergeant, was a man of reserve, quiet,
+and to the last degree inoffensive in his manner. A professing
+Christian, consistent in, and not ashamed of his profession, he had the
+respect of his command, and a friend in every acquaintance in the
+regiment. Educated for the ministry, he threw aside his theological text
+books on the outbreak of the Rebellion, and bringing into requisition
+some earlier lessons learned at a Military Academy, he opened a
+recruiting list with the zeal of a Puritan. It was not circulated, as is
+customary, in bar-rooms, but taking it to a rural district, he called a
+meeting in the Township Church, and in the faith of a Christian and the
+earnestness of a patriot, he eloquently proclaimed his purpose and the
+righteousness of the war. Success on a smaller scale, but like that of
+Peter the Hermit, followed his endeavor, and his quota of the Company
+was soon made up by the enlistment of nearly every able-bodied young man
+in the Township. His recruits fairly idolized him, and in their rougher
+and more unlettered way, were equally earnest advocates of the
+suppression of the Rebellion by any and every means.
+
+"Your Abolitionism will crop out from time to time, like the ledges of
+rock in the country we have just been passing through," said a Junior
+Lieutenant.
+
+"Call it Abolitionism, or what you will," replied his Senior. "I am for
+the suppression of the Rebellion by the speediest means possible. I am
+for the abolition of everything in the way of its suppression."
+
+"You would abolish the Constitution, I suppose, if you thought it in the
+way."
+
+"I would certainly amend the Constitution, had I the power, to suit the
+exigencies of the times. What is the Constitution worth without a
+country for it to control?"
+
+"There it comes. Anything to ease the nigger."
+
+"Yes, sir, I thank God that this Rebellion strikes a death-blow at
+slavery. That wherever a Federal bayonet gleams in a slave State, we can
+see a gleam of eternal truth lighting up the gloom of slavery. The
+recent Proclamation of the President was all that was needed to place
+our cause wholly upon the rock of God's justice, and on that base the
+gates of the hell of slavery and treason combined, shall not prevail
+against it."
+
+"Preaching again, Lieutenant," said our Western Virginia Captain, who
+was the Lieutenant's Senior officer, as he strolled leisurely toward the
+crowd. "I tell you, Lieutenant, if Old Abe don't make better
+preparations to carry out his Proclamation, he had better turn Chinese
+General at once."
+
+"Give him time, Captain. January 1 may bring preparations that we little
+dream of. At any rate, it places us in a proper position before the
+world. What ground had we to expect sympathy from the anti-slavery
+people of Europe, when we made no effort to release the millions
+enslaved in the South from bondage?"
+
+"As far as using the negroes as soldiers is concerned, it seems a day
+behind the fair. It should have been issued earlier. Why, we could have
+had them by thousands in Western Virginny, and officers in our regiment,
+who were with him, tell me that Patterson could have mustered an army of
+them. Instead of that they were driven from his lines, and when they
+brought him correct information as to the Rebels at Winchester, it was
+'don't believe the d----d nigger,' and all this while he dined and wined
+with the Rebel nabobs about Charlestown. Boys, we commenced this war
+wrong. I'm a Democrat, and always have been one; but I'm not afraid to
+say that we've all along been trying our best to make enemies of the
+only real friends we have inside of Rebel lines. Now, I don't like the
+nigger better than some of my neighbors; but in my opinion, a black
+Union man is better than a white Rebel any day. To say nothing of their
+fighting, why don't our Generals use them as servants, and why are they
+not our teamsters and laborers? Look at our able-bodied men detailed for
+servants about Pigeon-hole's Head-quarters."
+
+"Well, Captain," interrupted the Sergeant, "Pigey has a big
+establishment, and see if the papers don't make him out a big General
+for this daring reconnoissance."
+
+"This daring tomfoolery! If he'd come back to old Rosecrans with his
+story about a few pieces of artillery posted on a ridge, Rosy would want
+to know why the d----l he didn't find out what was behind them."
+
+"He showed great experience a few weeks ago," continued the Sergeant,
+"when the Western fellows let off one of their ground blasts. 'Where did
+that shell explode?' inquired Pigey, galloping up with his staff and
+orderlies to our Regimental Head-quarters. 'I heard no shell,' says the
+Colonel. 'Nor I,' says the Lieut.-Colonel. 'I did hear a ground blast,'
+said the Lieut.-Colonel, 'such as the boys in the Regiment below
+occasionally make from the rebel cartridges they find.' 'Ground blast!
+h--l!' says the General, excitedly, his eyes flashing from under his
+crooked cocked hat: 'Don't you think that an officer of my experience
+and observation would be able to distinguish the explosion of a shell
+from that of a ground blast?' 'No shell exploded, General,' said the
+Colonel, 'within the limits of my regiment.' 'The d----l it
+didn't--would you have me disbelieve my own ears? Now, I have issued
+orders enough about permitting these unexploded shells to lie about, and
+I purpose holding the Colonels responsible for all damage. Suppose that
+explosion was heard at corps head-quarters, as it doubtless was, and the
+inquiry is made from what quarter the rebels threw the shell, what reply
+am I, as the commanding General of this division, to make?'
+
+"'Tell them that it was a ground blast,' said a Second Lieutenant,
+politely saluting. 'I have just been down and saw the hole it made.'
+
+"'You saw the hole! and just below here! The d----l you did! D--n the
+ground blasts!' and the General turned his horse's head and started
+towards division head-quarters at a full gallop, followed by his
+grinning staff."
+
+"He's not to blame so much, boys," remarked the Captain. "He was a quiet
+clerk in the Topographical Department when the war broke out, I've been
+told, and I've no doubt he dusted the pigeon-holes in his charge
+carefully, and folded the papers neatly. When McClellan looked about for
+material to fill up his big staff with, who was so well calculated to
+attend to the topography of his battle-fields, considering that he
+fought so few, and most of those he had to fight on the Peninsula, the
+rebels got next day, as our Division General. Now, as Little Mac is not
+particularly noted for close acquaintance with rebel shells, the General
+has had small chance of knowing what kind of noise they do make when
+they burst. His great blunder, or rather, the Government's, is his
+taking command of a division, if it has but two brigades. I heard a
+Major say he had greatness thrust upon him. He's a small man in a big
+place. West Point has turned out some big men, like Rosecrans, Grant,
+Hooker, and many others that are a credit to the country--men of genuine
+talent, who have none of those foolish prejudices, that the regulars are
+the only soldiers, and that volunteers are a mere make-shift, that can't
+be depended upon. And West Point, like all other institutions, has had
+its share of small men, that come from it with just brains enough to
+carry a load of prejudice against volunteers and the volunteer service,
+and a very little knowledge of the ordinary run of military matters. An
+officer of real ability will never be a slave to prejudice. These small
+men are the Red-Tapists of the army--the Pigeon-Hole-Paper Generals, and
+being often elevated and privileged unduly, because they are from West
+Point, they play the very devil in their commands. Our corps commander,
+who was a teacher there, has brought a full share of the last kind into
+the corps.
+
+"I wander about a good deal among other camps of this corps, pick up
+information and make myself acquainted without standing on ceremony. I
+never wait for that. I always had a habit of doing it, and I honestly
+believe, from what I see and hear, there has been a studied effort, from
+some high commander, to teach these young regular officers
+treason,--yes, boys, treason,--because when a man tells me that we can't
+conquer the Rebels, and that after a while we'll have to make peace,
+etc., I set him down for a traitor; he is aiding and abetting the
+enemies of his country. If that ain't treason I'd like to know what is."
+
+"The Captain headed off a lot of young regulars the other evening a
+little the prettiest," said the Sergeant.
+
+"Let's have it!" said a dozen in the crowd, now considerably increased.
+
+"The Captain," continued the Sergeant, "had asked me to take a walk with
+him after dress-parade, and we strolled along the Sharpsburg road
+towards Corps Head-quarters. As we got just beyond the house and barn
+where the Rebel wounded are, we came upon a crowd of officers,
+commissioned and non-commissioned, and some privates. A quite young
+officer, with a milk-and-water face and a moustache like mildew on a
+damp Hardee, was talking very excitedly about the Administration not
+appreciating General McClellan; that there wasn't intellect enough there
+to appreciate a really great military genius; that European officers
+praised him as our greatest General, and that even the Rebel officers
+said that they feared him more than any of our Commanders; and yet all
+the while the Abolition Administration tied his hands and fettered his
+movements, and all because Little Mac wasn't crazy enough to say that
+the Rebels could be subjugated and their armies exterminated, as some
+fanatical Regulars and nearly all the Volunteer officers pretend to say.
+'Now, I believe,' said the officer, thrusting his thumbs between his
+armpits and his vest, and puffing out his breast pompously, 'I believe,
+as Little Mac says, 'we can drive them to the wall;' we can lessen the
+limits of their country; but, gentlemen, after all, there will have to
+be a peace.'
+
+"I thought," said the Sergeant, "the Captain was going to break in upon
+him here. He threw back his cap till the rim was on top of his head,
+rammed his hands into his pockets, and edged his way a little further
+into the crowd, towards the speaker; but he didn't, and the speaker went
+on to say:
+
+"'There are the people, too, crazy about a forward movement. Why don't
+they come down and shoulder muskets themselves?'
+
+"The Captain could hold in no longer. He drew his hands out of his
+pockets, straightened them along his side, like a game rooster
+stretching his wings just before a fight, and sidling up to the officer,
+looking at him out of the corner of his eye, he burst out--
+
+"'Why don't they shoulder muskets themselves? I'll tell you
+why,--because we are here to do it for them. They have sent us, they pay
+us, and they've a right to talk, and I hope they will talk. Anything
+like a decent forward movement of this Corps would have saved the
+disgrace of the second Bull Run battle. We all know how the Corps lagged
+along the road-side, and the Rebel cannon all the while thundering in
+the ears of its Commander.'
+
+"'A Volunteer officer, I suppose,' said the young officer, somewhat
+sneeringly. 'Where have you ever seen service?'
+
+"'Yes, sir, a Volunteer officer,' said the Captain straightening up,
+facing full the officer, and eyeing him until his face grew paler.
+'Where have I seen service? In Mexico, as private in the 4th Regular
+Artillery, while you were eating pap with a spoon, you puppy! You had
+better have stayed at that business; it was an honest one, at any rate,
+and Uncle Sam would have been saved some pay that you draw, while, like
+a dishonest sneak, you preach treason.'
+
+"'How dare you insult a Regular officer?' said a gold-striped, dandified
+fellow, as he twisted the ends of his moustache into rat-tails.
+
+"'Who the d----l are you?' said the Captain, turning on him so suddenly
+that the officer commenced to back; 'with your gold lace on your
+shoulders that may mean anything or nothing. What are you anyhow?
+Captain? Lieutenant? Clerk? or Orderly? Those straps are a good come
+off, boys.' The crowd laughed. 'I suppose he thinks he's a staff
+officer.'
+
+"'I am, and a Lieutenant in the Regular army,' said the officer angrily,
+and giving the word 'Regular' the full benefit of his voice.
+
+"'Regular and be d----d,' retorted the Captain. 'I want you both to
+understand that I am a Captain in the Volunteer service of the United
+States; that that service is by Act of Congress on a footing with the
+Regular service, and that I'll always talk in this style when I hear
+treason. I am the superior officer of you both, and have a right to talk
+to you. I've been in service since the Rebellion broke out, and by the
+mother of Moses, I never heard treason preached by officers in Uncle
+Sam's uniform till I got into this Corps. It makes my blood boil, and I
+won't stand it. Pretty doctrine you are trying to teach these soldiers;
+but I know by their faces they understand the matter better than you,
+and you can't do them any damage.' 'That's so,' sang out several of the
+crowd. 'You fellows all talk alike. I have heard dozens of you talk in
+the same way, and I believe your ideas are stocked from a higher source.
+There is something wrong in the head of this Grand Army of the Potomac.
+The way it's managed, grand only in reviews.'
+
+"'We shall report you, sir,' said the Rat-tailed Moustache, 'for
+speaking disrespectfully of your superior officers.'
+
+"'Report as quick as you please. About that time you'll find another
+report at the War Department, against two Regular Lieutenants, for
+speaking discouraging and disloyal sentiments.'
+
+"'A Volunteer officer would stand a big chance at the Department making
+a complaint against Regulars,' said the officer, as they both backed out
+of the crowd, followed by a couple of non-commissioned officers and
+privates.
+
+"'You d----d butterflies,' roared the Captain after them. 'I'll bet ten
+dollars to one that you only stayed in service when the war broke out,
+because you thought you could trust greenbacks better than Confederate
+scrip.'
+
+"'You shall hear from us,' replied Rat-tail, as they walked on.
+
+"'Am ready to hear from both at once now, you cowardly sneaks,' sang out
+the Captain. 'Don't believe you ever smelt powder, or ever will, if you
+can help it.'
+
+"'Boys,' said the Captain, who had the sympathies of the crowd that
+remained strongly with him. 'These shallow-brained fellows and some
+older ones that wear stars, that havn't head enough to cut loose from
+the Red-tape prejudice against us Volunteers, are a curse to the Army of
+the Potomac. Is it any wonder that this Grand Army, burdened with
+squirts of that stripe, is a burlesque and a disgrace to the country for
+its inefficiency. In the West, where Regular officers, unprejudiced, go
+hand in hand with Volunteers, we make progress. But what's the use of
+talking, the body won't move right if the heart's rotten.'
+
+"'True as preachin',' said one of the men, and the sentiment seemed
+approved by the crowd, as we gradually took up the homeward step."
+
+"Has the Sergeant told 'the whole truth,' and nothing but the truth?"
+inquired a Lieutenant, a lawyer at home, of the Captain.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the Captain firmly, "and I'll stick by the whole of
+it, and a good deal more."
+
+"Well, I've been slow about believing many statements that I have
+heard," continued the Lieutenant; "but to-day I heard some facts from a
+Colonel in the Second Brigade that fairly staggered me. His Regiment,
+through some Red-tape informality, has been without tents. In
+consequence, considerable sickness, principally fever, has prevailed.
+Some time ago he made a request to Division Head-quarters, for
+permission to clean out and use the white house that stands near his
+Regiment, and that, until lately, was full of wounded rebels, as a
+hospital. Corps Head-quarters must be heard from. After considerable
+delay, the men in the meanwhile sickening and dying, the request was
+denied. The sickness, through the rains, increased, and the application
+was renewed with like success. The owner, who was a Rebel sympathizer,
+was opposed, and other like excuses, that in the urgency of the case
+should not have been considered at all, were given. The sickness became
+alarming in extent. The Regiment was entirely without shelter, save that
+made from the few pine boughs to be had in the neighborhood. The Colonel
+took some boards that the rebels had spared from the fence surrounding
+the house, and with them endeavored to increase the comfort of the men.
+In the course of a day or two, a bill was sent to him from
+Head-quarters, with every board charged at its highest value, with the
+request to pay, and with notice that in failure of immediate payment the
+amount would be charged upon his pay-roll. This treatment disgusted the
+Colonel, who is a gentleman of high tone and the kindliest feelings, and
+angered by the heartlessness that denied him proper shelter for his
+sick, now increased to a number frightfully large, with a heavy share of
+mortality, he cut red-tape, sent over a detail to the house, had it
+cleansed of Rebel filth, and filled it with the sick. The poor fellows
+were hardly comfortable in their new quarters, before an order came from
+Division Head-quarters for their immediate removal.
+
+"'I have no place to take them to; they are sick, and must be under
+shelter,' was the Colonel's reply.
+
+"'The Commanding General of the Division orders their instant removal,'
+was the order that followed.
+
+"'The Commanding General of Division must take the responsibility of
+their removal on his own head,' was the spirited reply of the Colonel.
+
+"That evening towards sunset, the second edition of Old Pigeon, 'Squab,'
+as the boys called him, rode up with the air of 'one having authority,'
+and in a conceited manner informed the Colonel that the General
+commanding the Division had directed him to place him under arrest. Now
+these things I know to be facts. I took pains to inform myself."
+
+The Lieutenant's story elicited many ejaculations of contempt for the
+heartlessness of some in high places; but they were cut short by the
+Captain's stating that he knew the circumstances to be true, and that
+Old Pigeon stated the Colonel should wait for his hospital tents, the
+requisition for which had been sent up months before. It was shelved in
+some pigeon-hole, and the Colonel was to stand by and see his men sicken
+and die, while a rebel farmer's house near by would have saved many of
+them.
+
+"But we're in for it, boys. No use of talking. Obedience is lesson No. 1
+of the soldier, and you know that we must not 'mutter or murmur' against
+our Commanding General, which position Old Pigey so often reminds us he
+holds. The old fellow half suspects that if he didn't, we'd forget it
+from day to day; for Lord knows there is nothing about the man but his
+position to make any one remember it. Now I am determined to have some
+sleep."
+
+"Sleep! such a night as this?" said one of the crowd.
+
+"Of course; we'll need it to-morrow, and an old soldier ought to be able
+to sleep anywhere, in any kind of weather."
+
+The Captain left. There was a partial dispersing of the crowd, but many
+a poor fellow shivered in that pelting rain the night long.
+
+The morning found the enemy at a respectful distance, and the homeward
+route was quietly resumed. Late in the afternoon the advance entered
+Shepherdstown. At this time the rear was shelled vigorously, and as the
+troops continued their passage through the town cavalry charges were
+made upon both sides. That only ford was again crossed, and the evening
+was well advanced ere the troops regained their camps.
+
+A day later, and the Dailies, through their respective reporters, told
+an astonished public how the brilliant and daring reconnoissance had
+discovered qualities of great generalship in a man who but a short time
+before had figured as a quiet literary man in the seclusion of an
+office.
+
+"And, be jabers," said our little Irish Corporal, on hearing it read,
+"Uncle Sam would have gained by paying him to stay in that office."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+_Departure from Sharpsburg Camp--The Old Woman of Sandy Hook--Harper's
+Ferry--South sewing Dragon's Teeth by shedding Old John's Blood--The
+Dutch Doctor and the Boar--Beauties of Tobacco--Camp Life on the
+Character--Patrick, Brother to the Little Corporal--General Patterson no
+Irishman--Guarding a Potatoe Patch in Dixie--The Preacher Lieutenant on
+Emancipation--Inspection and the Exhorting Colonel--The Scotch Tailor on
+Military Matters._
+
+
+October was drawing to a close rapidly, when, at last, after repeated
+false alarms, the actual movement of the army commenced. No one, unless
+himself an old campaigner, can appreciate the feelings of the soldier at
+the breaking up of camp. Anxious for a change of scenery as he may be,
+the eye will linger upon each familiar spot, the quarters, the parade
+ground, and rocky bluff and wooded knoll, until memory's impress bears
+the lasting distinctness of a lifetime. Those leaving could not banish
+from their minds, even if disposed, the thought that, although but a
+temporary sojourn for them, it had proved to be the last resting-place
+of many of their comrades. The hospital, more dreaded than the field,
+had contributed its share to the mounds that dotted the hills from the
+strife of Antietam.
+
+          "There is not an atom of this earth
+          But once was living man--"
+
+was a day dream, doubtless, of the poetic boy of eighteen; but how
+suggestive it becomes, when we consider how many thousands and hundreds
+of thousands of mounds rising upon every hill in the border States,
+attest devotion to the cause of the Union, or treason, in this foulest
+of Rebellions.
+
+The route lay, after passing the village of Sharpsburg, through a narrow
+valley, lying cosily between the spurs of two ridges that appeared to
+terminate at the Ferry. On either hand the evidences of the occupation
+of the country by a large army were abundant. Fences torn down, ground
+trampled, and fields destitute of herbage. The road bordering the canal,
+along which is built the straggling village of Sandy Hook, was crowded
+with the long wagon trains of the different Corps. A soldier could as
+readily distinguish the Staff from the Regimental wagons, as the Staff
+themselves from Regimental officers. The slick, well fed appearance of
+the horses or mules of Staff teams, usually six in number, owing to
+abundance of forage and half _loaded_ wagons, were in striking contrast
+with the four half fed, hide-bound beasts usually attached to the
+overloaded Regimental wagons. Order after order for the reduction of
+baggage, that would reduce field officers to a small valise apiece,
+while many line officers would be compelled to march without a change of
+clothing, did not appear to lessen the length of Staff trains. That the
+transportation was unnecessarily extensive, cannot be doubted. That the
+heaviest reduction could have been made with Head-quarter trains, is
+equally true.
+
+"Grey coats one day and blue coats the next," said an old woman clad in
+homespun grey, who came out of a low frame house as the troops slowly
+made their way past the teams through the village of Sandy Hook.
+
+"Right on this rock is where General Jackson rested hisself," continued
+the old woman.
+
+"Were there many Rebs about?" inquired one of the men.
+
+"Right smart of them, I reckon;" replied the old woman; "but Lord! what
+a lookin' set of critters. Elbows and knees out; many of them hadn't
+shoes, and half of them that had had their toes out. You boys are
+dandies to them. And tired too, and hungry. Gracious! the poor fellows,
+when their officers weren't about, would beg for anything almost to eat.
+Why, my daughter Sal saw them at the soap-fat barrel! They said they
+were nearly marched and starved to death. And their officers didn't look
+much better. Lord! it looks like a pic-nic party to see you blue coats,
+with your long strings of wagons, and all your other fixins. You take
+good care of your bellies, the way you haul the crackers and bacon. Old
+Jackson never waits for wagons. That's the way he gets around you so
+often."
+
+"Look here, old woman," roared out one of the men, "you had better dry
+up."
+
+"Yes, and he'll get around you again," continued the old woman in a
+louder key. "You think you're going to bag him, do you. You're some on
+baggin'; but he'll give you three days' start and beat you down the
+valley. They acted like gentlemen, too, didn't touch a thing without
+leave, and you fellows have robbed me of all I have."
+
+"They were in 'My Maryland,' and wanted to get the people all straight,"
+suggested one of the boys.
+
+The old lady did not take the hint, but kept on berating the fresh men
+as they passed--taunting them by disparaging comparison with the Rebel
+troops. A neighbor, by informing them of the fact of her having two
+sons in the Rebel service, imparted the secret of her interest.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And there is the Ferry, so often pictured, or attempted to be, by pen
+and pencil. Either art has failed, and will fail, to do justice to that
+sublimely grand mountain scenery. Not quite three years ago, an iron old
+man, who perished with the heroism of a Spartan, or rather, to be just,
+the faith of a Christian; but little more than a year in advance of the
+dawn of the day of his hope, centred upon this spot the eyes of a
+continent. A crazy fanatic, was the cry, but--
+
+          "Thy scales, Mortality, are just
+          To all that pass away."
+
+Time will reveal that it was not the freak of a madman, but rather a
+step in the grand progress of universal emancipation, and that Old John
+had foundations for his purposed campaign, quite as substantial as those
+upon which better starred enterprises have succeeded.
+
+"Lor, Massa, if Old John had only had these men," said a wench to one of
+Patterson's Captains, as he paused for a few moments while drilling his
+command at Charlestown, during that fruitless campaign, so formidable in
+preparation, and so much more disgraceful than that of Old John in its
+termination, for the latter, in his dying heroism, won the admiration of
+a world.
+
+"Why, what could Old John have done with them?" replied the Captain.
+
+"Golly, Massa," said the wench, with a knowing grin; "he would have
+walked right through Virginny, and he'd have had plenty of help too. I
+knows, many a nigger about here that didn't say nuthin', would have
+jined him."
+
+"Why didn't they join him?"
+
+"Lor, Massa, they didn't know it in time. Hadn't any chance. Massa
+wanted us to go see him hung; but only the youngsters went. We colored
+pussons neber forget Old John. No sah!"
+
+The men wound their way as best they could beneath the precipitous and
+towering rocks of the Maryland Heights, through the teams that blocked
+up the road, and a short distance above the Railroad Bridge, filed to
+the left, and crossed upon the pontoons. As they passed the Engine
+House, the utmost endeavors of the officers could not prevent a bulge to
+the right, so great was the anxiety to see the scene of Old John's
+heroic but hopeless contest. Denounced by pro-slavery zealots as a
+murderer, by the community at large as a fanatic, who fifty years hence
+will deny him honorable place in the list of martyrs for the cause of
+eternal truth!
+
+The town itself was almost a mass of ruins; both sides, at various
+stages of the war, having endeavored to effect its destruction. Another
+pontoon bridge was crossed, bridging the Shenandoah--sparkling on its
+rocky bed--the _Dancing Water_, as termed by the Aborigines, with their
+customary graceful appropriateness. To one fond of mountain scenery, and
+who is not? the winding road that follows the Shenandoah to its
+junction, then charmingly bends to the course of the Potomac, is
+intensely interesting. But why should an humble writer weary the
+reader's patience by expatiating upon scenery, the sight of which
+Jefferson declared well worth a visit across the Atlantic, at a day when
+such visits were tedious three month affairs, and uncertain at that? War
+now adds a bristling horror to the shaggy mountain tops, and from the
+hoarse throats of heavy cannon often "leap from rock to rock the
+beetling crags among" well executed counterfeits of "live thunder."
+
+The Potomac is followed but a short distance, the road winding by an
+easy ascent up the mountain ridge, and descending as easily into a
+narrow and fruitful valley. In this valley, four miles from the Ferry, a
+halt was ordered, and the Division rested for the night and succeeding
+day, in a large and well sodded field.
+
+"Gentlemen," said our Brigadier, in a sly, good-humored way, as he rode
+up to the field officers of the Regiment, "the field upon which you are
+encamped, and all the land, almost as far as you can see, on the left of
+yon fence, belong to a Rebel now holding the rank of Major in the Rebel
+service. All I need say, I suppose, gentlemen," and the General left to
+communicate the important information to the other Regiments of the
+Brigade. As a fine flock of sheep, some young cattle, a drove of porkers
+that from a rear view gave promise of prime Virginia hams, and sundry
+flocks of chickens, had been espied as the men marched into the field,
+the General's remarks were eminently practical and suggestive.
+
+"Charlie, what's the state of the larder?" said the Major, with his
+usual thoughtfulness, addressing the cheerful mess cook.
+
+"Some boiled pork and crackers. Poor show, sir!" Such fare, after a hard
+day's march, in sight of a living paradise of beef, mutton, pork, and
+poultry, would have been perfectly inexcusable; and forthwith, the
+Major, "the little Dutch Doctor," and a short, stoutly-built Lieutenant,
+all armed to the teeth, started off to reconnoitre, and ascertain in
+what position the Rebel property was posted. As they went they canvassed
+the respective merits of beef, mutton, pork and poultry, until a short
+grunt from a porker, as he crossed the Doctor's path, ended the
+discussion. The Major and Lieutenant cocked their pistols, but withheld
+firing, as they saw the Doctor prostrate, holding by both hands the hind
+leg of a patriarch of the flock.
+
+"Oh, Heavens! we don't want that old boar!" cried out at once both the
+Major and Lieutenant.
+
+"Goot meat, make strong, goot for health, very," said the Doctor,
+holding on with the grasp of a vice, while the boar fairly dragged him,
+face to the ground, "after the manner of all creeping things." The
+Doctor was in a fix. Help his companions would not give. He could not
+hold the boar by one hand alone. After being considerably bruised, he
+was compelled to release his hold, to his intense disgust, which he
+evinced as he raised himself up, puffing like a porpoise, by
+gesticulating furiously, and muttering a jargon in which the only thing
+intelligible was the oft-repeated word, "tam." A well-directed shot from
+the Major, shortly afterwards, brought down a royal "Virginia mutton,"
+as the camp phrase is. Another from the Lieutenant grazed the rear of a
+fine young porker's ham; but considerable firing, a long chase, and many
+ludicrous falls occurred, before that pig was tightly gripped between
+the legs of the Lieutenant.
+
+The expedition was so successful that the aid of some privates was
+called in to help carry to quarters the rich spoils of the chase. As for
+the Doctor,--after the refusal of assistance in his struggle, he walked
+homeward in stately but offended dignity, and shocked the Chaplain, as
+he was occasionally in the habit of doing, by still muttering "tam."
+
+A person enjoying the comforts of home, testy as to the broiling of a
+mutton-chop perhaps, for real, unalloyed enjoyment of appetite should
+form one of a camp circle, toasting, at a blazing fire, as the shades
+of evening gather round, steaks freshly cut with a camp-knife from flesh
+that quivered with remaining life but a moment before, assisting its
+digestion by fried hardees, and washing both down by coffee innocent of
+cream. That is a feast, as every old campaigner will testify; but to be
+properly appreciated a good appetite is all essential. To attain that,
+should other resources fail, the writer can confidently recommend a
+march, say of about fifteen miles, over rough or dusty roads.
+
+And then, as the appetites of the men are sated by the hardy provender
+of Uncle Sam, varied, as in this instance, by Virginia venison, and they
+respectively fall back and take to
+
+          "Sublime Tobacco! glorious in a pipe;"
+
+what more pleasant than the discussion of the doings of the day, or of
+the times, the recital of oft-repeated and ever-gaining yarns, or the
+heart-stirring strains of national ballads, while each countenance is
+lit with the ever-varying glow of the fire.
+
+Upon this evening not only Head-quarters but the Regiment was exultant
+in the feast upon the fat of a rebellious land. To add to their comfort
+several large stacks of hay and straw had been deprived of their fair
+proportions, and preparations had been made for the enjoyment of rest
+upon beds that kings would envy, could they but have the sleepers' sound
+repose.
+
+The morrow had been set apart as a day of rest--a fact known to the
+Regiment, and their fireside enjoyment was accordingly prolonged.
+
+The camp, more than any other position in life, develops the greatest
+inconsistencies in poor human nature. The grumbler of the day's march is
+very frequently the joker of the bivouac. The worse, at the expense of
+man's better qualities, are rapidly strengthened, and the least particle
+of selfishness, however concealed by a generous nature at the period of
+enlistment, fearfully increases its power with every day of service. The
+writer remembers well a small, slightly-built, bow-legged fellow, who
+would murmur without ceasing upon the route, continually torment his
+officers for privilege to fall out of ranks to adjust his knapsack,
+fasten a belt, or some such like purpose, who, on the halt, would amuse
+his comrades for hours in performing gymnastic feats upon out-spread
+blankets. Another, who at home flourished deservedly under the sobriquet
+of "Clever Billy," became, in a few brief months of service, the most
+surly, snappish, and selfish of his mess.
+
+Pipe in mouth, their troubles are puffed away in the gracefully
+ascending smoke. Many a non-user of the weed envies in moody silence the
+perfect satisfaction resting upon the features of his comrade thus
+engaged. Non-users are becoming rare birds in the army. So universal is
+the habit, that the pipe appears to belong to the equipment, and the
+tobacco-pouch, suspended from a button-hole of the blouse, is so
+generally worn that one would suppose it to have been prescribed by the
+President as part of the uniform.
+
+The crowd gathered about the Head-quarters had largely increased, and
+while luxuriating upon the straw, time passed merrily. The Colonel, who
+never let an opportunity to improve the discipline of his command pass
+unimproved, seized the occasion of the presence of a large number of
+officers to impress upon them the necessity of greater control of the
+men upon the march. The easy, open, but orderly route-step of the
+Regulars was alluded to--their occupying the road alone, and not spread
+out and straggling like a drove of cattle. A stranger seeing our
+Volunteers upon the march would not give them credit for the soldierly
+qualities they really possess. Curiosity, so rampant in the Yankee,
+tempts him continually to wander from the ranks to one or other side of
+the road.
+
+"Well, Colonel," said a tall Lieutenant, "the Regulars look prim and
+march well, but they have done little fighting, as yet, in this Army of
+the Potomac."
+
+"You forget the Peninsula," replied the Colonel.
+
+"Oh, there they were caught unexpectedly, and forced into it. In this
+Corps they are always in reserve; and that's what their officers
+like,--everything in reserve but pay and promotion. It is rather
+doubtful whether they will fight."
+
+"Ov coorse they'll fight," said the little Irish Corporal, half rising
+from his straw on the outskirts of the crowd; "Ov coorse they will.
+They're nearly all my own countrymen. I know slathers of them; and did
+you iver in your born days know an Irishman that wouldn't fight,
+anywhere, any time, and for anything, if he had anybody to fight?"
+
+"And a quart of whiskey in him," interrupts the Adjutant. "As Burns says
+of the Scotch--
+
+          "'Wi' Tippeny they fear nae evil,
+          Wi' Usquebagh they'll face the Devil.'"
+
+"Now, don't be comparing an Irishman, if you plaze, Adjutant, to a
+scratch-back Scotchman. The raal Irishman has fire enough in his bluid;
+but there's no denying a glass of potheen is the stuff to regulate it.
+Talk about Rigulars or Volunteers fighting;--it's the officers must do
+their duty, and there's no fear thin of the men."
+
+"What did you enlist for, anyway, Terence?" broke in a Second
+Lieutenant.
+
+"It's aisy seeing that it wasn't for a Lieutenant's pay," retorted
+Terence, to the amusement of the crowd, and then, as earnestness
+gathered upon his countenance, he continued: "I enlisted for revinge,
+and there's little prospect of my seeing a chance for it."
+
+"For revenge?" said several.
+
+"Yis, for revinge. I had worked early and late at a liv'ry stable, like
+a nagur, to pay the passage money of my only brother to this country.
+Faith, he was a broth of a boy, the pride of all the McCarthy's,"--tears
+welled in his eyes as he continued,--"just three years younger than
+mysilf, a light, ruddy, nately put togither lad as iver left the bogs;
+and talk about fightin'!--the divil was niver in him but in a fight, and
+thin you'd think he was all divil. That was Patrick's sport, and fight
+he would, ivery chance, from the time whin he was a bit of a lad, ten
+years ould, and bunged the ould schoolteacher's eyes in the parish
+school-house. Will, he got a good berth in a saloon in the Bowery, where
+they used Patrick in claning out the customers whin they got noisy, and
+he'd do it nately too, to the satisfaction of his employer. He did well
+till a recruiting Sergeant--bad luck to him--that knew the McCarthys in
+the ould country, found him out, and they drank and talked about ould
+times, and the Sergeant tould him that the army was the place for
+Irishmen,--that there would be lots of fightin'. The chance of a fight
+took Patrick, and nixt day he left the city in a blouse, as Fourth
+Corporal in an Irish Rigiment, and a prouder looking chappie, as his own
+Captain tould me, niver marched down Broadway. And thin to think he was
+murthered by my own Gineral."
+
+"Who? How was that?" interrupted half a dozen at once.
+
+"Gineral Patterson, you see, to be shure."
+
+"Why, Terence," broke in the Lieutenant, "you shouldn't be so hard upon
+General Patterson; he's of an Irish family."
+
+"The Gineral an Irishman! Niver! Of an Irish family! must have been
+hundreds of years back, and the bluid spoiled long before it got into
+his veins, by bad whiskey or something worse. It takes the raal potheen,
+that smacks of the smoke of the still, to keep up the bluid of an
+Irishman. Rot-gut would ruin St. Patrick himself if he were alive and
+could be got to taste it. Gineral Patterson an Irishman! no, sir; or
+there would have been bluidy noses at Bunker's Hill or Winchester, and
+that would have saved some at Bull Run."
+
+"On with your story, Terence," said the crowd.
+
+"Beggin' your pardon, there's no story about it,--the blissid truth,
+ivery word of it.
+
+"Will, you see, while our ould Colonel, under the Gineral's orders, had
+me guarding a pratie patch--"
+
+"Set an Irishman to guard a potato patch!" laughed the Second
+Lieutenant.
+
+"It wasn't much use," said Terence, smiling, "for they disappeared the
+first night, and the slim college student that was Sergeant of that
+relief was put under guard for telling the officer of the guard, next
+morning, that there had been a heavy dew that night, and it evaporated
+so fast that it took the praties along. We lived on praties next day,
+but the poor Sergeant had to foot the bill.
+
+"Well, as I was going on to say, while I was helping guard a pratie
+patch, an ice-house, corn-crib, smoke-house, and other such things that
+were near our camp ground, and that belonged to a Rebel Colonel under
+Johnston;--Johnston himself was staling away with all his army to help
+fight the battle of Bull Run. Patrick--pace to his sowl--was in that
+battle and fought like a tiger, barrin' that he would have done better,
+as his Captain tould me, if he hadn't forgot the balls in his
+cartridge-box, and took to his musket like a shelaleh all day long.
+Patrick's regiment belonged to a Brigade that was ordered to keep
+Johnston in check, and there stood Patrick in line, like a true lad as
+he was, clubbing back the Butternuts, striking them right and
+left--maybe the fellows belonged to this same Rebel Colonel's
+regiment--until a round shot struck him full in the breast, knocking the
+heart out of as true an Irishman as iver lived, and killing dead the
+flower of the McCarthys.
+
+"I didn't know it till we got to Baltimore, and thin whin I riflicted
+how the poor boy marched up to fight the bluidy Rebels, and how they
+killed him, my own brother, while I--I, who would have given my right
+hand to save him,--yis," said Terence, rising, and tears streaming from
+his eyes, "would have waded through fire and bluid to help the darlin',
+the pride of his mother,--I was guarding a Rebel Colonel's property,
+whin the whole of us, if we had fought Johnston, as we ought to have
+done, might have kept him back and saved our army, and that would have
+saved me my brother. And thin whin I remimbered how thick the Gineral
+was with the Rebel gentry, and how fine ladies with the divil in their
+eyes bowed to him in Charlestown, and spit at and cocked up their noses
+at us soldiers, while their husbands were off, maybe, murthering my
+brother; and how the Gineral, proud as a paycock on his prancing
+chestnut sorrel, tould us in the meadow that Johnston was too strong
+for us to attack, but that if he would come out from behind his big guns
+the Gineral would lay his body on the sod before he'd lave it, whin he
+intended his body to lie on a soft bed the rest of his life, and how he
+said and did all this while our men, and my brother among them, were
+being murthered by this same Johnston that he was sent to hould back,--I
+couldn't keep down my Irish bluid. I cursed him and all his tribe by all
+the Saints from St. Peter to St. Patrick, until good ould Father Mahan
+tould me, whin I confessed, that he was afraid I would swear my own sowl
+away, and keep Patrick in Purgatory; and the Father tould me that I
+should lave off cursin' Patterson, for the Americans thimselves would
+attend to that, and take to fighting the Rebels for revinge; and he said
+by way of incouragement that at the same time I'd be sarving God and my
+adopted country. And here I am, under another safe Commander. Four
+months and no fight,--nearly up to the ould First, that sarved three
+months without sight of a Rebel, barrin' he was a prisoner, or in
+citizen dress, like some we have left behind us."
+
+"Boys, Terence tells the truth about Patterson's movements," said the
+tall Lieutenant. "The day before we left we were ordered to be ready to
+move in the morning, with three days' cooked rations. We were told that
+our Regiment was assigned a place in the advance, and it was
+semi-officially rumored that a flank attack would be made upon
+Winchester. At this day the whole affair appears ridiculous, as Johnston
+had at that very time left Winchester, leaving only a trifling show of
+force, and he never, at his best, had a force equal to Patterson's. Half
+of his troops were the raw country militia. But we under-officers were
+none the wiser. It was rumored that Bill McMullen's Rangers had found
+charts that informed the General of the extent and strength of the Rebel
+works and muster-rolls, that showed his force to be over 50,000. That
+those works had no existence to the extent alleged, and that the
+muster-rolls were false, are now well known. But that night it was all
+dead earnest with us. Rations were cooked and the most thorough
+preparations made for the expected work of the morrow. Sunrise saw the
+old First in line, ready for the move. Eight o'clock came; no move,
+Nine--Ten, and yet no move. Arms had been stacked, and the men lounged
+lazily about the stacks. Eagle eyes scanned the surrounding country to
+ascertain what other Brigades were doing. At length troops were seen in
+motion, but the head of the column was turned towards the Ferry. 'What
+does this mean?' was the inquiry that hastily ran from man to man; and
+still they marched towards the Ferry. By and by an aide-de-camp directed
+our Brigade to fall into the column, and we then discovered that the
+whole army was in line of march for the Ferry, with a formidable
+rear-guard to protect it from an enemy then triumphing at Bull Run.
+
+"Well, Patterson's inertness, to speak of it tenderly, cost the country
+much blood, millions of money, and a record of disgrace; but it gave a
+Regiment of Massachusetts Yankees opportunity to whittle up for their
+home cabinets of curiosities a large pile of walnut timber which had
+formed John Brown's scaffold, and to make extensive inroads in prying
+with their bayonets from the walls of the jail in which he had been
+confined pieces of stone and mortar. Guards were put upon the Court
+House in which old John heard his doom with the dignity of a Cato, at an
+early date, or it would have been hewn to pieces. A fine crop of corn
+in full leaf was growing upon the field of execution, and for a space of
+ten feet from the road-side the leaves had been culled for careful
+preservation in knapsacks. The boys had the spirit. Their Commander
+lacked capacity or will to give it effect. A beggarly excuse was set up
+after the campaign was over,--that the time of service of many of the
+Regiments was about expiring, and that the men would not reenlist,--not
+only beggarly, but false. The great mass volunteered to remain as it
+was, with no prospect of service ahead. All would have stayed had the
+General shown any disposition for active work, or made them promise of a
+fight."
+
+"Golly," said a tall, raw-boned Darkie, showing his ivories to a crowd
+of like color about him, as the fine band of the Fencibles played in
+front of the General's Head-quarters. "Dese Union boys beat de
+Mississippi fellurs all hollur playing Dixie."
+
+Hardly a face was to be seen upon the streets, but those of these
+friendly blacks. They thronged about the camps, to be repulsed by
+stringent orders at all quarters. Property they were, reasoned the
+commander, and property must be respected. And it was; even pump handles
+were tied down and placed under guard. Oh! that a Ben Butler had then
+been in command, to have pronounced this living property contraband of
+war, and by that sharp dodge of a pro-slavery Democrat, to have given
+Uncle Sam the services of this property. Depend upon it, that would have
+ended campaigning in the valley of the Shenandoah, that store-house of
+Rebel supplies, as it has turned out to be; supplies too, gathered and
+kept up by the negroes that Patterson so carefully excluded from his
+lines.
+
+"And would have saved us this march," says the Colonel, "a goose chase
+at any rate."
+
+"Yes, and had the policy of using the negro been general at the
+commencement of this Rebellion, troops would not be in the field at this
+day," responded the Lieutenant.
+
+"Why do they not now, come boldly out and acknowledge that slavery is a
+curse to any nation?" said the Preacher Lieutenant. "It caused the
+Rebellion, and its downfall would be the Rebellion's certain and speedy
+death. Thousands of years ago, the Almighty cursed with plagues a proud
+people for refusing to break the bonds of the slave. The day of miracles
+is past. But war, desolating war, is the scourge with which He punishes
+our country. The curse of blood is upon the land; by blood must it be
+expiated. We in the North have been guilty, in common with the whole
+country, in tolerating, aiding, and abetting the evil. We must have our
+proportion of punishment. Why cannot the whole country meet the issue
+boldly as one man, and atone for past offence by unanimity in the
+abolition of the evil?"
+
+"On the nigger again," said his Junior Lieutenant, assuming, as he
+spoke, an oratorical attitude. "Why do you not go on and talk about them
+working out their own salvation, with muskets on their shoulders and
+bayonets by their sides, and with fear and trembling too, I have no
+doubt it would be. Carry out your Scripture parallels. Tell how the
+walls of Jericho fell by horns taken from the woolly heads of rams; but
+now that miracles are no more, how the walls of this Jericho of Rebeldom
+are destined to fall before the well-directed butting of the woolly
+heads themselves. You don't ride your hobby with a stiff rein to-night,
+Lieutenant."
+
+The taunting air and strained comparison of the Lieutenant enlivened the
+crowd, but did not in the least affect the Senior, who calmly replied:
+
+"If our Government does not arm the negro on the basis of freedom, the
+Rebels in their desperation will, and although we have the negro
+sympathy, we may lose it through delay and inattention, and in that
+event, prepare for years of conflict. The negroes, at the outset of this
+Rebellion, were ripe for the contest. Armies of thousands of them might
+have been in the field to-day. Now the President's Proclamation finds
+them removed within interior Rebel lines, and to furnish them arms, will
+first cost severe contests with the Rebels themselves."
+
+The toil of the day and the drowsiness caused by huge meals, gradually
+dispersed the crowd; but the discussion was continued in quarters by the
+various messes, until their actual time of retiring.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Inspection! inspection!" said the Adjutant, on the succeeding
+afternoon, to the Lieutenant-Colonel for the time being in command of
+the Regiment, handing him, at the same time, an order for immediate
+inspection. "Six inspections in two weeks before marching," continued
+the Adjutant, "and another after a day's march. I wonder whether this
+Grand Army of the Potomac wouldn't halt when about going into battle, to
+see whether the men had their shoe-strings tied?"
+
+The Adjutant had barely ceased, when the Inspecting officer, the ranking
+Colonel of the Brigade, detailed specially for the duty, made his
+appearance. He was a stout, full-faced man of fifty or upwards, with an
+odd mixture in his manner of piety and pretension. Report had it that
+his previous life had been one of change,--stock-jobber, note-shaver,
+temperance lecturer, and exhorter--
+
+          "All things by turns, and nothing long."
+
+The latter quality remained with him, and it was a rare chance that he
+could pass a crowd of his men without bringing it into play. His
+"talks," as the boys called them, were more admired than his tactics,
+and from their tone of friendly familiarity, he was called by the
+fatherly title of "Pap" by his Regiment, and known by that designation
+throughout the Brigade.
+
+The Regiment was rapidly formed for inspection, and after passing
+through the ranks of the first Company, the Colonel pompously presented
+himself before its centre, and with sober tones and solemn look,
+delivered himself as follows:
+
+"Boys, have your hearts right," the Colonel clapping, at the same time,
+his right hand over his diaphragm. "If your hearts are right your
+muskets will be bright." The men stared, the movement not being laid
+down in the Regulations, and not exactly understanding the connexion
+between the heart and a clean musket; but the Colonel continued, "the
+heart is like the mainspring of a watch, if it beats right, the whole
+man and all about him will be right. There is no danger of our failing
+in this war, boys. We have a good cause to put our hearts in. The Rebels
+have a bad cause, and their hearts cannot be right in it. Good hearts
+make brave men, brave men win the battles. That's the reason, boys, why
+we'll succeed."
+
+"Can't see it!" sang out some irreverent fellow in the rear rank.
+
+The Colonel didn't take the hint; but catching at the remark continued,
+"You do not need to see it, boys, you can feel whether your heart is
+right." This provoked a smile on the faces of the more intelligent of
+the officers and men, which the Colonel noticed. "No laughing matter,
+boys," he said emphatically, at the same time earnestly gesticulating,
+"your lives, your country, and your honor depend upon right hearts." And
+thus the old Colonel exhorted each Company previous to its dismissal,
+amusing some and mystifying others. The heart was his theme, and time or
+place, a court-martial or a review, did not prevent the introduction of
+his platitudes.
+
+Said the Major, after inspection, "The Colonel, in the prominence he
+gives the heart in its control of military affairs, rather reverses a
+sentiment I once heard advanced by a little Scotch tailor, who had just
+been elected a militia colonel."
+
+"Let's have it, Major," said the Adjutant.
+
+"The little Scotchman," continued the Major, "had been a notorious
+drunkard and profane swearer. Through the efforts of a travelling
+Evangelist, he became converted and joined a prominent denomination. His
+conversion was a remarkable instance, and gave him rapid promotion and a
+prominent position in the church. While at his height, through some
+scheme of the devil, I suppose, he was elected colonel of militia. The
+elevation overcame him. Treat he must and treat he did, and to satisfy
+the admiring crowd in front of the bar drank himself, until reason left,
+preceded by piety, and his old vice of profanity returned, with
+seven-fold virulence. He was discovered by a brother of the church,
+steadying himself by the railing of the bar, and rehearsing, amid
+volleys of oaths, the fragments that remained in his memory of an old
+Fourth of July speech. 'Brother,' said his fellow church-member, as he
+gently nudged his arm. 'Brother!' in a louder key, and with a more
+vigorous nudge, 'have you forgotten your sacred obligations to the
+church, your position as a--'
+
+"'The church!' echoed the tailor, all the blood of the MacGregor rising
+in his boots, with an oath that shocked the brother out of all
+hope--'What's the church to military matters?'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+_Snicker's Gap--Private Harry on the "Anaconda"--Not inclined to turn
+Boot-Black--"Oh! why did you go for a Soldier?"--The
+ex-News-Boy--Pigeon-hole Generalship on the March--The Valley of the
+Shenandoah--A Flesh Carnival--The Dutch Doctor on a Horse-dicker--An Old
+Rebel, and how he parted with his Apple-Brandy--Toasting the
+"Union"--Spruce Retreats._
+
+
+The movement down the Valley was one of those at that time popular
+"bagging" movements, peculiar to the Grand Army of the Potomac, and in
+their style of execution, or to speak correctly, intended execution--for
+the absence of that quality has rendered them ridiculous--original with
+its Commander. Semi-official reports, industriously circulated from the
+gold-striped Staff to the blue-striped Field Officer, and by the latter
+whispered in confidence in the anxious ears of officers of the line, and
+again transferred in increasing volume to the subs, and by them in
+knowing confidence to curious privates, had it that the principal rebel
+force would be hemmed in, in the Valley of the Shenandoah, by our
+obtaining command of the Gaps, and then we would be nearest their
+Capital in a direct line--we would compel them to fight us, where, when,
+and how we pleased, or else beat them in a race to Richmond, and
+then----. The reader must imagine happy results that could not
+consistently be expected, while to gain the same destination over
+equidistant and equally good roads, Strategy moved by comparatively slow
+marches and easy halts, while Desperation strained every nerve, with
+rattling batteries and almost running ranks.
+
+"But, Lieutenant, if that's so," alluding to the purpose of their march,
+"why are we halting here?"
+
+"Our troops block up the roads, I suppose."
+
+"We could march in the fields," rejoined the anxious private, "by the
+road-side; they are open and firm."
+
+"We'll see, Harry, in a day or two, what it all amounts to. May be the
+'Anaconda' that is to smash out the rebellion, is making another turn,
+or 'taking in a reef,' as the Colonel says."
+
+"Well," rejoined the Private, "I have endeavored to book myself up, as
+far as my advantages would allow, in our army movements; and the nearest
+approach to anything like an anaconda, that I can see or hear of, is
+that infernal Red-tape worm that is strangling the soul out of the army.
+What inexcusable nonsense to attempt to apply to an immense army in time
+of war, such as we have now in the field, the needless, petty
+pigeon-hole details that regulated ten thousand men on a peace
+establishment. And to carry them out, look how many valuable officers,
+or officers who ought to be valuable, from the expense Uncle
+Sam has been at to give them educational advantages, are doing
+clerkly duty--that civilians, our business men, our accountants,
+could as well, if not better, attend to--in the offices of the
+Departments at Washington, in the Commissary and Quarter-Master's
+Departments,--handling quills and cheese-knives instead of swords, and
+never giving 'the villainous smell of saltpetre' the slightest chance
+'to come betwixt the wind and their nobility.'"
+
+Harry, at the time of his volunteering was an associate editor of a well
+established and ably conducted country newspaper. He had thrown himself
+with successful energy into the formation of the regiment to which he
+belonged. A prominent position was proffered him, but he sturdily
+refused any place but the ranks, alleging that he had never drilled a
+day in his life, and particularly insisting that those who had seen
+service and were somewhat skilled in the tactics, although many of them
+were far his inferiors in intelligence, should occupy the offices. From
+his gentlemanly deportment and ability he was on familiar terms with the
+officers, and popular among the men. Withal, he was a finely formed,
+soldierly-looking man. In the early part of his service he was reserved
+in his comments upon the conduct of the war, and considered, as he was
+in fact, conservative,--setting the best possible example of
+taciturnity, subordinate to the wisdom of his superiors.
+
+"Harry, you have been detailed as a clerk about Brigade Head Quarters,"
+said the Orderly Sergeant of his company, one morning, after he had been
+in service about two months.
+
+Harry did not like the separation from his Company in the least, but
+notwithstanding, quietly reported for duty. Several days of desk
+drudgery, most laborious to one fresh from out-door exercise, had
+passed, when one morning about eight o'clock, a conceited coxcomb of an
+aid, in slippers, entered the office-tent, and holding a pair of muddy
+boots up, with an air of matter-of-course authority--ordered Harry to
+blacken them, telling him at the same time, in a milder and lower tone,
+that black Jim the cook had the brush and blackening.
+
+"What, sir?" said Harry, rising like a rocket, his Saxon blood mounting
+to the very roots of his red hair.
+
+"I order you to black those boots, sir," was the repeated and more
+insolent command.
+
+"And I'll see you d----d first," retorted Harry, doubling his fist.
+
+The aid not liking the furious flush upon Harry's face, with wise
+discretion backed out, muttering after he was fairly outside of the
+tent, something about a report to the Brigadier. Report he did, and very
+shortly after there was a vacancy in his position upon the Staff of that
+Officer. Harry, at his own request, was in the course of a week relieved
+from duty, and restored to his Company. Ever after he had a tongue.
+
+The reply of the Lieutenant to Harry's remarks has all this time been in
+abeyance, however.
+
+"Harry," said that officer, "we must follow the stars without murmuring
+or muttering against the judgment of superiors,--but one can't help
+surmising, and," the Lieutenant had half mechanically added when the
+Sergeant-Major saluted him.
+
+"Where is the Captain, Lieutenant?"
+
+"Not about, at present."
+
+"Well," continued the Sergeant, "reveille at four, and in line at five
+in the morning."
+
+Those beds of thickly littered straw were hard to leave in the chill
+mist of the morning. The warning notes of the reveille trilling in
+sweetest melody from the fife of the accomplished fife-major,
+accompanied by the slumber-ending rattle of the drum, admitted of no
+alternative. Many a brave boy as he stood in line that morning, ready
+for the march, the first sparkle of sunrise glistening upon his bayonet,
+wondered whether father or mother, sister or brother, yet in their
+slumbers, doubtless, in the dear old homestead, knew that the army was
+on the move, and that the setting sun might gild his breast-plate as in
+his last sleep he faced the sky.
+
+"Oh! why did you go for a soldier?" sang our little news-boy,
+tauntingly, as he capered behind a big burly Dutchman in the rear rank,
+who had encountered all manner of misfortune that morning,--missing his
+coffee--and what is a man worth on a day's march without coffee--because
+it was too hot to drink, when the bugle sounded the call to fall in, his
+meat raw, not even the smell of fire about it, and his crackers half
+roasted; his clothes, too, half on, belts twisted, knapsack badly made
+up. As he grumbled over his mishaps, in his peculiar vernacular,
+laughter commenced with the men, and ended in a roar at the song of the
+news-boy.
+
+A crowd gathers food for mirth from the most trivial matters. Incidents
+that would not provoke a smile individually, convulse them collectively.
+Men under restraint in ranks are particularly infectious from the
+influence of the passions. With lightning-like rapidity, to misapply a
+familiar line--
+
+          "They pass from grave to gay, from lively to severe."
+
+Snicker's Gap, which drew its euphoneous name from a First Virginia
+family that flourished in the neighborhood, was one of the coveted
+points. In the afternoon our advance occupied it, and the neighboring
+village of Snickersville; fortunately first perhaps, in force, or what
+is most probable, considering results, amused by a show of resistance to
+cover the main Rebel movement then rapidly progressing further down the
+valley. From whatever cause, firing--musketry and artillery--was heard
+at intervals all the latter part of the afternoon; and as the troops
+neared the Gap, they were told that the Rebels had been driven from it
+across the river, and that it was now in our possession. Night was
+rapidly setting in as the division formed line of battle on the borders
+of the village. A halt but for a few moments. Their position was shortly
+changed to the mountain slope below the village. Down the valley sudden
+flashes of light and puffs of smoke that gracefully volumed upwards,
+followed by the sullen roar of artillery, revealed a contest between the
+advancing and retreating forces. That fire-lit scene must be a life
+picture to the fortunate beholders. Directly in front and on the left,
+thousands of camp fires burning in the rear of stacks made from
+line-of-battle, blazed in parallel rows, regular as the gas-lights of
+the avenues of a great city, and illumining by strange contrasts of
+light and shade the animated forms that encircled them. Far down to the
+right, the vertical flashes from the cannon vents vivid as lightning
+itself, instantly followed by horizontal lurid flames, belched forth
+from their dread mouths, lighting for the instant wood and field, formed
+the grandest of pyrotechnic displays. Rare spectacle--in one magnificent
+panorama, gleaming through the dark mantle of night, were the steady
+lights of peaceful camps, and the fitful flashing of the hostile cannon.
+
+"Fall in, fall in!" cried the officers, at the bugle call, and in a few
+moments the Brigade was in motion. Some in the ranks, with difficulty,
+at the same time managing their muskets and pails of coffee that had not
+had time to cool; others munching, as they marched, their half-fried
+crackers, and cooling with hasty breath smoking pieces of meat, while
+friendly comrades did double duty in carrying their pieces. The soldier
+never calculates upon time; the present is his own when off duty, and he
+is not slow to use it; the next moment may see him started upon a long
+march, or detailed for fatigue duty, and with a philosophy apt in his
+position, he lives while he can.
+
+The road through Snickersville, and up the romantic gorge or gap between
+the mountains, was a good pike, and in the best marching condition. At
+the crest the Brigade undoubled its files, and entered in double ranks a
+narrow, tortuous, rocky road, ascending the mountain to the left,
+leading through woods and over fields so covered with fragments of rock,
+that a country boy in the ranks, following up a habit, however, not by
+any means confined to the country, of giving the embodiment of evil the
+credit of all unpleasant surroundings, remarked that "the Devil's
+apron-strings must have broke loose here." That night march was a weary
+addition to the toil of the day. A short cut to the summit, which
+existed, but a mile in length, and which the Commander of the Force to
+which the Brigade formed part, could readily have ascertained upon
+inquiry, would have saved a great amount of grumbling, many hard oaths,
+for Uncle Toby's army that "swore so terribly in Flanders," could not
+outdo in that respect our Grand Army of the Potomac,--and no trifling
+amount of shoe-leather for Uncle Sam. The night was terribly cold, and
+the wind in gusts swept over the mountain-top with violence sufficient
+to put the toil-worn man, unsteady under his knapsack, through the
+facings in short order. Amid stunted pines and sturdy undergrowth, the
+Regiments in line formed stacks, and the men, debarred fire from the
+exposed situation, provided what shelter they could, and endeavored to
+compose themselves for the night. Vain endeavor. So closely was that
+summit shaved by the pitiless blasts, that a blanket could only be kept
+over the body by rolling in it, and lying face downwards, holding the
+ends by the hands, with the forehead resting on the knapsack for a
+pillow. Some in that way, by occasionally drumming their toes against
+the rocks managed to pass the night; many others sought warmth or
+amusement in groups, and others gazed silently on the camp-fires of the
+enemy, an irregular reflex of those seen on the side they had left--here
+glimmering faintly at a picket station, and there at a larger
+encampment, glowing first in a circle of blaze, then of illumined smoke,
+that in its upward course gradually darkened into the blackness of
+night. To men of contemplative habits, and many such there were, though
+clad in blouses, the scene was strongly suggestive. Our states emblemed
+in the lights of the valleys and the mountain ridge as the much talked
+of "impassable barrier." But faith in the success of a cause Heaven
+founded, saw gaps that we could control in that mountain ridge which
+would ultimately prove avenues of success.
+
+"Captain, where did you make the raise?" inquired a young Lieutenant, on
+the following day,--one of a group enjoying a blazing fire, for the ban
+had been removed at early dawn--of a ruddy-faced, sturdy-looking
+officer, who bore on his shoulder a tempting hind quarter of beef.
+
+"There is a little history connected with this beef," as he lowered his
+load. "Lieutenant," replied the Captain, interlarding his further
+statement with oaths, to which justice cannot and ought not to be done
+in print, and which were excelled in finish only by some choice ones of
+the Division General. "I went out at sunrise, thinking that by
+strolling among the rocks I might stir up a rabbit. I saw several, but
+got a fair shot at one only, and killed it. While going into a fence
+corner, in which were some thorn bushes, that I thought I could stir
+another cotton tail from, I saw a young bullock making for me, with
+lowered horns and short jumps. I couldn't get through the thorn bushes,
+and the fact is, being an old butcher I didn't care much about it, so I
+faced about, looked the bullock full in the eyes, and the bullock eyed
+me, giving at the same time an occasional toss of his short horns. Now I
+was awful hungry, never was more hollow in my life--the hardees that I
+swallowed dry in the morning fairly rattled inside of me. By-and-by I
+smelt the steaks, and a minute more I felt sure that he was a Rebel
+beast. Our young cattle up North don't corner people in that way. What's
+the use, thought I, and out came my Colt, and I planted a ball square
+between his eyes. As I returned the pistol he was on his side kicking
+and quivering. While looking at him, and rather coming to the conclusion
+that I had bought an elephant after all, as I had not even a penknife to
+skin it with, I spied that sucker-mouthed Aid of Old Pigeon-hole coming
+from another corner of the field, cantering at full jump. I left,
+walking towards Camp.
+
+"'Captain, where was that picket-firing?'
+
+"I pointed towards the wood, and told him that I thought it was along
+the picket-line."
+
+"'It must have been, I suppose,' said the Aid, in a drawling manner.
+'The General was sure it was a rifle. The rest of us thought it a pistol
+shot,' he said, as he rode off.
+
+"When he got into the wood I returned to the bullock, cursing Old
+Pigey's ears for want of experience in shots. They made me come mighty
+close to being arrested for marauding.
+
+"'Oh! whar did you git the jump-high?' said a darkie, who came up
+suddenly, pointing to the rabbit which I had put on the fence, with
+mouth open and a big show of the whites of his eyes. When he saw the
+carcass he fairly jumped.
+
+"'Massa has had me shinning it round de rocks all morning. When I'm on
+de one side de jump-high is on de oder; and if I go back widout one
+he'll cuss me for a d----d stumbling woolly-head. Dat's his name for me
+any way.'
+
+"I struck a bargain with the boy; he loaned me his jack-knife, and held
+the legs, and I had the skin off as soon as a two-inch blade (hacked at
+that) would allow, and I gave him the jump-high, and told him if he'd
+watch the beef till I carried this quarter home, I'd give him a fore
+quarter. I knew his Master was as bad off as myself, and would ask no
+questions, and then I sneaked up in rear of the General's quarters."
+
+"That's what I'd call Profane History," said the Lieutenant, as the
+Captain resumed his load.
+
+"Well, boys! Go into the Third Cavalry four months, as I did; and if any
+of you swear less than I do, I'll treat."
+
+"One fault with the story, Captain," said another Lieutenant, detaining
+him; "you make no application."
+
+"I didn't intend it as a sermon; what application would you make?"
+
+"A very practical one, Captain. I would apply half a quarter to one man,
+half a quarter to another. Make a distribution among your friends."
+
+The Captain, somewhat sold, told them to send down a detail, and he
+would distribute.
+
+The detail returned, well loaded, having performed their duty
+faithfully, with the exception of trimming Sambo's fore-quarter "mighty
+close," as he phrased it.
+
+That bullock turned out to be merely the first course of a grand flesh
+carnival, which lasted the remaining two days of the stay on Snicker's
+summit. The wood and fields almost swarmed with rabbits and quails; but
+although furnishing amusement to all, they were but titbits for the
+delicate. By some remissness of vigilance under the stringent orders,
+cattle, sheep, and hogs were slaughtered on all sides. There was an
+abundance of them; the farmers in the valley having driven them up, as
+was their custom, for the pasture and mast to be found in the fields and
+woods. Half wild, the flavor of their flesh was a close approach to that
+of game. As may be supposed, where licence was untrammelled, there was
+much needless slaughter. Fine carcasses were left as they fell, with the
+loss only of a few choice cuts. As the beasts, especially the pigs,
+which looked like our ordinary porkers well stretched, could run with
+great speed, the chase was amusing as well as exciting. Red breeches and
+blue fraternized and vied with each other in the sport, to quarrel,
+perhaps, over the spoils.
+
+Few will fail to carry to their homes recollections of that pleasing
+episode in the history of the Regiment: the feasts of fat things, the
+space-built inclosures around the camp-fires that sheltered them from
+the blast, and were amphitheatres of amusement--recollections that will
+interest many a future fireside, destined, with the lapse of time, to
+become sacred as family traditions of the Revolution. And have they not
+equal claims? The Revolution founded the country; this struggle must
+save it from the infamous and despotic demands of a most foul and
+unnatural Rebellion.
+
+"Halloo! Doctor! where did that 'animile' come from," inquired the
+Major, who formed one of a crowd, on the afternoon of the last day of
+their stay in the Head Quarters Spruce Retreat, as the little Dutch
+Doctor strutted alongside of a Corporal of an adjoining regiment, who
+led by a halter, extemporized from a musket-strap and a cross-belt, a
+small light dun horse.
+
+"Mine, Major! Pay forty-five tollar--have pay five, only forty yet to
+get. How you like him? What you tink?"
+
+The "only forty yet to get" amused the crowd, but the Major, with the
+gravity of a connoisseur, walked around the beast, nipped his legs, and
+opened his mouth.
+
+"Doctor, it's a pity to use this beast--only two years old, and never
+shod. Is he broke?"
+
+"No. No broke anywhere. Have look at whole of him."
+
+The crowd laughed, and the Major with them.
+
+"You don't understand me. Can you ride him?"
+
+"Me no ride him, no saddle. Corporal, him ride all round."
+
+The Corporal stated that he was broken in so far as to allow riding, and
+was very gentle, as indeed was apparent from the looks of the animal.
+
+"When did you get him, Corporal?" was the query of one of the crowd.
+
+"I bought four yesterday for four hundred and seventy-five dollars
+Confederate scrip."
+
+"Why, where did you get that?"
+
+"Bought it in Washington, when we first went through, of a boy on the
+Avenue for fifteen cents. I thought there might be a show for it some
+day or other."
+
+The Corporal was a slender, lantern-jawed, weasel-faced Monongahela
+raftsman, sharp as a steel-trap.
+
+"The old fellow," continued he, "hung on to five hundred dollars for
+about an hour. He took me into his house, gave me a nip of old apple
+brandy, and then he'd talk about his horses and then another nip, till
+we felt it a little, but no go. I had to jew, for it was all I had. I'd
+just as leave have given him another hundred, but I didn't tell him so.
+I told him I got it at Antietam."
+
+"You d----d rascal," said he, "I had a son killed and robbed there,
+maybe it's his money. It looks as if it had been carried a good while."
+
+"I had played smart with it, rubbed it, wet it, and in my breast pocket
+on those long marches it was well sweated."
+
+"Suppose it was your son's," said I, "all is fair in war."
+
+"That's so," said the old Rebel. "I have two other sons there; I would
+go myself, it I wasn't seventy-eight and upwards."
+
+"Well, looky here," said I, "this isn't talking horse; we'll manage your
+sons, and you, too, if you don't dry up on your treason slang. Now, old
+covey, four hundred and seventy-five or I'm back to camp without them."
+
+"I turned and got about ten steps, when he called me back and told me to
+take them. I got a bully pair of matches, fine blacks, that a Colonel in
+the Regiment paid me one hundred and twenty-five for at first sight, and
+a fine pacing bay that our Major gave me seventy-five for, and this
+one's left."
+
+"Doctor, I'm about tired of trotting around after them other forty.
+They're givin' out cracker rations, and I don't want to be cheated out
+of mine, and I must go," said the Corporal, turning quickly to the
+Doctor.
+
+The latter personage snapped his eyes, and kept his cap bobbing up and
+down, by wrinkling his forehead, as he somewhat plaintively asked the
+crowd for the funds.
+
+"Good Lord! Doctor, you might as well try to milk a he-goat with a
+bramble bush as to get money in camp now," said the Major.
+
+"Corporal," said the Adjutant, a fast friend of the Doctor's, and being
+of a musical turn, his partner in many a Dutch duet, as a bright idea
+struck him, "you don't want the money now--there are no sutlers about,
+suppose the Doctor gives you an order on the Pay-Master."
+
+"Well," said the Corporal, after some little study, and keeping a sharp
+look-out on the Adjutant, whose features were fixed, "that's a fact, I
+have no use for the money now. If one of you Head-Quarter officers
+endorses it, I will. 'Spose it's all straight."
+
+The Adjutant drew the order, and one of the Field-Officers endorsed it,
+after the manner of documents forwarded through regular military
+channels:
+
+"Approved and respectfully forwarded."
+
+It was handed to the Corporal, and he turned to go, leaving the horse
+with the Doctor, and giving the crowd an opportunity for their laugh, so
+far suppressed with difficulty. He had gone but a few paces when an
+exclamation from the quondam Third cavalryman called him back, and ended
+for the moment the laughter.
+
+"Where does the old fellow live, Corporal?"
+
+"Keep out that lane to the left, then across lots by a narrow path.
+Can't miss it. He has no more horses."
+
+"Don't want horses."
+
+"That apple brandy it's no use trying for."
+
+"Boys," said the Captain, "I'm good for half a dozen canteens of the
+stuff, I'll bet my boots on it. Who'll go along?"
+
+"I," replied a sturdy brother Captain.
+
+"Recollect now. All here at nine to-night to receive our report. No use
+to tell you that, though, when whiskey is about," said the first
+Captain, as the crowd dispersed.
+
+And that report was given by his comrade to the punctual crowd as
+follows:
+
+"When I came out to the charred pine stumps on the lane, where I was to
+meet the Captain, it was a little before dusk. I was just about clear of
+the wood, when the Colonel's big black mare, ridden by the Captain, came
+bouncing over a scrub pine and lit right in front of me. The d----l
+himself couldn't have made me feel a colder shudder.
+
+"'What's the matter? Where's your horse?'
+
+"'I thought we had better walk,' said I, recovered from the fright;
+'it's only a short distance.'
+
+"'That ain't the thing. There must be some style about this matter.'
+
+"I had noticed that the Captain had on the Colonel's fancy Regulation
+overcoat, a gilt edged fatigue cap, his over-long jingling Mexican
+spurs, and the Major's sabre dangling from his side. I came back, got
+the Adjutant's horse, and rejoined him.
+
+"'Now, I want you to understand,' said the Captain, putting on his
+prettiest, as we jogged along the lane, 'that I'm General Burnside. How
+does that strike you?'
+
+"'That you don't look a d--n bit like Burney. He is no fancy man. Your
+style is nearer the Prince's,--Fitz John. All you want are the yellow
+kids,' rejoined I.
+
+"'Too near home, that. How will Gen. Franklin do?'
+
+"As I knew nothing about Franklin's appearance, I said I supposed that
+would do. Before respectable people I'd have hated to see any of our
+Generals wronged by the Captain's looks, but as it was only a Rebel, it
+didn't make any difference. And then the object overcame all scruples.
+
+"'Well,' continued the Captain, 'you are to be one of my aids. When we
+get near the house, just fall back a pace or two.'
+
+"And off he rode, the big mare trotting like an elephant, and keeping my
+nag up to a gallop. Keeping back a pace or two was a matter of
+necessity. The Captain was full a hundred yards ahead when he halted
+near the house to give me time to get in position, his black mare
+prancing and snorting under the Mexican ticklers in a manner that would
+have done credit to Bucephalus. He pranced on up towards the house,
+which was a long weather-boarded structure, a story and a half high,
+with a porch running its entire length. The building was put up, I
+should judge, before the war of 1812, and not repaired since. A crabbed
+old man in a grey coat, with horn buttons, and tan-colored pantaloons,
+looking as if he didn't know what to make exactly of the character of
+his visitors, was on the porch. Near him, and somewhat in his rear, was
+a darkie about as old as himself.
+
+"'Won't you get off your critters?' at length said the old man, his
+servant advancing to hold the horses.
+
+"The Captain dismounted, and as his long spurs jingled, and the Major's
+sabre clattered on the rotten porch floor, the old fellow changed
+countenance considerably, impressed with the presence of greatness.
+
+"'I am Major-General Franklin, sir, commander of a Grand Division of the
+Grand Army of the Potomac,' pompously said the Captain, at the same time
+introducing me as his Aid, Major Kennedy.
+
+"'Well, gentlemen officers,' stammers the old man, confusedly, and
+bowing repeatedly, 'I always liked the old Union. I fit for it in the
+milish in the last war with the Britishers. Walk in, walk in,' continued
+he, pointing to the door which the darkie had opened.
+
+"We went into a long room with a low ceiling, dirty floor with no carpet
+on, a few old chairs, with and without backs, and a walnut table that
+looked as if it once had leaves. In one corner was a clock, that stopped
+some time before the war commenced, as the old man afterwards told us,
+and in the opposite corner stood a dirty pine cupboard. While taking
+seats, I couldn't help thinking how badly the room would compare with a
+dining room of one of the neat little farm houses that you can see in
+any of our mountain gaps, where the land produces nothing but
+grasshoppers and rocks, and the farmers have to get along by raising
+chickens to keep down the swarms of grasshoppers, and by peddling
+huckleberries, and they say, but I never saw them at it, by holding the
+hind legs of the sheep up to let them get their noses between the rocks
+for pasture."
+
+This latter assertion was indignantly denied by an officer who had his
+home in one of the gaps.
+
+"'Well,' continued the Captain, 'I only give it as I heard it. The old
+man talked Union awhile, said he tried to be all right, but that his
+sons had run off with the Rebels; and he hemmed and hawed about his
+being all right until the Captain, who had been spitting fips a long
+time, got tired, especially after what the Corporal had said.
+
+"'Well, my old brother patriot,' said the Captain, bending forward in
+his chair, and putting on a stern look, 'it don't look exactly right.'
+
+"'How! What! gentlemen officers,' said the old Rebel, pretending, as he
+raised his hand to his ear, not to hear the Captain.
+
+"The Captain repeated it louder in his gruff voice, and with a few more
+airs.
+
+"'Why, gentlemen officers?' said the old man, rising, half bowing, and
+looking about, ready to do anything.
+
+"'You know as well as we do,' said the Captain; 'that you wouldn't let
+two of your neighbors be this long in the house without offering them
+something to drink. Now, my old friend, as you say you're all right,
+we're neighbors in a good cause, and one neighborly act deserves
+another; you might be wanting to have your property protected, or to go
+to the Ferry, or to send something, and you could hardly get a pass
+without a Major-General having something to do with it.'
+
+"At this last the old fellow's face brightened up somewhat.
+
+"'I'll lose a right smart lot of crops,' said the old man, drawing his
+chair close to the Captain in a half begging, confidential sort of a
+way, 'if I don't get to the Ferry this fall. They're stored up there,
+and I want to go up and show them I am a Union man all right. George,'
+turning to the darkie, who, cap in hand, stood at the door, 'strike a
+light and get the waiter, and three glasses, and bring up some of the
+old apple in a pitcher. Be careful not to spill any. Liquor is mighty
+scarce,' continued he, turning to us, 'in these parts since the war.
+This 'ere I've saved over by hard squeezin'. It was stilled seven years
+ago this fall--the fall apples were so plenty.'
+
+"George had the tallow-dip, a rusty waiter, three small old-fashioned
+blue glass tumblers, and a pitcher with the handle knocked off, on the
+table in good time. We closed around it with our chairs, and the Captain
+filled the glasses, and rising, gave for the first round 'The old
+Union.' Our glasses were emptied; the old man had but sipped of his.
+
+"'My old friend, you fought in 1812, you say, and hardly touch your
+tumbler to the old Union. Come, it must have a full glass.' The
+authority in the tone of the Captain made the old man swallow it, but as
+he did so he muttered something about its being very scarce.
+
+"'Now,' said the Captain, refilling the glasses, 'Here is The Union as
+it is.'
+
+"The old Rebel feeling his first glass a little, and they say anyway
+when wine goes in the truth comes out, said in rather a low, trembling
+tone,
+
+"'Now, the fact is, gentlemen officers, some Yankees--not you! not you!
+but some Yankees way up North, acted kind of bad.'
+
+"'That's not the question,' said the Captain, 'there are bad men all
+over, and lots of them in Virginia. The toast is before the house,'--the
+Captain had already swallowed his--'and it must be drunk;' and the
+Major's sabre struck the floor till the table shook.
+
+"With a shudder at the sound the old man gulped it down. The glasses
+were refilled and the pitcher emptied.
+
+"'Here's to The blessed Union as it will be, after all the d----d Rebels
+are either under the sod or swinging in hemp neck-ties about ten feet
+above it,' the Captain shouted, waving at the same time his uplifted
+glass in a way that brought a grin on George's face, and made the old
+man look pale.
+
+"'Now! now! now! gentlemen officers,' gasped the old traitor, as
+if his breath was coming back by jerks, 'that is pretty hard,
+considerin'--considerin' my two sons ran off 'gainst my will--'gainst
+my will, gentlemen officers, understand, and jined the Rebels;' and
+then, as the liquor worked up his pluck and pride, he went on, 'and old
+Stonewall when he was here last, told me himself at this very table that
+such soldiers the South could be proud of; and Turner Ashby told me the
+same thing, and it would be agin all natur for an old man not to feel
+proud of such boys, after hearing all that from such men, and now you
+want me to drink such a toast. That----'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' broke in the Captain, who had emptied his glass, 'and it
+must be done.'
+
+"'The fact is, gentlemen officers,' the liquor still working up his
+pluck, 'we Southerners _had_ to fit you. You sent old Brown down to run
+off our niggers, and then when we hung him, you come yourselves. Every
+cussed nigger--and I had forty-three in all--has left me and ran away
+but old George and two old wenches that can't run, and are good for
+nothin' but to chaw corndodgers.' The whiskey now worked fast on the old
+man, and making half a fist, he said, 'I reckon when hangin' day comes
+some Blue Bellies will have an airin'.'
+
+"'You d----d grey-headed old traitor!' roared out the Captain, 'the
+liquor has let the treason out. Now, by all that's holy, drink that
+toast standing, head up, as if there was patriotic blood in your
+veins--as if you lived in the State Washington was born in--or you'll
+find out what it is to talk treason before a Major-General of the army
+of the United States.' Another stroke of the sabre on the floor that
+rattled the broken glass in the windows followed. The old man gave
+another shudder, straightened up, steadied himself at the table with his
+left hand, and with a swallow that nearly strangled him, drank off his
+glass.
+
+"'Ha! old fellow,' said the Captain, grinning, 'you came near cheating
+hemp that clip.'
+
+"'George, show us where the apple brandy is,' he continued, addressing
+the darkie.
+
+"The darkie bowed, grinned, and pointed to the door leading to the
+cellar way.
+
+"'Oh, Lord! my spirits! Don't take it, gentlemen officers, I must have a
+morning dram, and it's all I've got. Let me keep the spirits.'
+
+"'You old d----l!' exclaimed the Captain, as he eyed him savagely,
+'spirits have made all the trouble in the country. Yes, sir. Bad whiskey
+and worse preaching of false spiritual doctrines, such as slavery being
+a Divine institution, and what not, started the Rebellion, and keep it
+up. Spirits are contraband of war, just as Ben Butler says niggers are,
+and we'll confiscate it'--here the Captain gave me a sly look--'in the
+name and by the authority of the President of the United States. Major,
+where's your canteens?'
+
+"I produced three that had been slung under my cape, and the Captain as
+many more.
+
+"As the old Rebel saw the preparations he groaned out, 'My God! and only
+four inches in the barrel George! mind, the barrel in the corner.'
+
+"Knowing the darkie would be all right, we followed under pretty stiff
+loads, the old man bringing up the rear, staggering to the door and
+getting down the steps on his hands and knees.
+
+"The Captain tasted both barrels. One in a corner was commissary that
+the darkie said 'Massa had dickered for just the day afore.' The other
+was well nigh empty. George, old as he was, had the steadiest hands, and
+he filled the canteens one by one, closing their mouths on the cedar
+spigot. As he did it, he whispered, 'Dis'll make de ole nigger feel
+good. Massa gets flustered on dis and 'buses de ole wimin. De commissary
+fotches him--can't hurt nuffin wid dat.'
+
+"'There's devilish little to fluster him now,' said the Captain, as he
+tipped the barrel to fill the last canteen.
+
+"The old man had stuck at the bottom of the steps. George fairly carried
+him up, and he lay almost helpless on the floor.
+
+"'That last toast,' said the Captain, as we left the room, 'will knock
+any Rebel.'
+
+"George held the horses, and I rather guess steadied our legs as we got
+on, well loaded with apple juice inside and out. The Captain's spurs
+sent the black mare off at a gallop, over rocks and bushes, and he left
+me far behind in a jiffy. But I did in earnest act as an aid before we
+got to camp. I found him near the place where we turn in, fast between
+two scrub oaks, swearing like a trooper at the pickets, as he called the
+bushes, for arresting him, and unable to get backward or forward. His
+swearing saved him that clip, as it was dark, and I would have gone past
+if I hadn't heard it."
+
+"I move the adoption of the report, with the thanks of the meeting to
+Major-General Franklin and his genuine Aid," said the Adjutant, after a
+stiff drink all around.
+
+"I move that it be referred back for report on the Commissary," said a
+Lieutenant, after another equally stiff round.
+
+The Adjutant would not withdraw his motion,--no chairman to preserve
+order,--brandy good,--drinks frequent, and in the confusion that ensued
+we close the chapter, remarking only that the Commissary was spared to
+the old Rebel, through an order to march at four next morning, that came
+to hand near midnight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+_The March to Warrenton--Secesh Sympathy and Quarter-Master's
+Receipts--Middle-Borough--The Venerable Uncle Ned and his Story of the
+Captain of the Tigers--The Adjutant on Strategy--Red-Tapism and
+Mac-Napoleonism--Movement Stopped--Division Head-Quarters out of
+Whiskey--Stragglers and Marauders--A Summary Proceeding--Persimmons and
+Picket-Duty--A Rebellious Pig--McClellanism._
+
+
+The order to march at four meant moving at six, as was not unfrequently
+the case, the men being too often under arms by the hour shivering for
+the step, while the Staff Officers who issued the orders were snoozing
+in comfortable blankets. Be the cause what it might that morning, the
+soldiers probably did not regret it, as it gave them opportunity to see
+the lovely valley of the Shenandoah exposed to their view for the last
+time, as the fog gradually lifted before the rays of the rising sun. The
+Shenandoah, like a silver thread broken by intervening foliage, lay at
+their feet. Far to the right, miles distant, was Charlestown, where old
+John's soul, appreciative of the beauties of nature at the dread hour of
+execution, seeing in them doubtless the handiwork of nature's God,
+exclaimed "This is indeed a beautiful country." In the front, dim in the
+distance, was Winchester, readily discovered by the bold mountain spur
+in its rear. Smaller villages dotted the valley, variegated by fields
+and woods--all rebellious cities of the plain, nests of treason and
+granaries of food for traitors. A blind mercy that, on the part of the
+Administration, that procured its almost total exemption from the
+despoiling hand of war.
+
+Some in the ranks on Snicker's Summit that fine morning could remember
+the impudent Billingsgate of look and tongue with which Mrs. Faulkner
+would fling in their faces a general pass, from a wagon loaded with
+garden truck for traitors in arms at Bunker Hill--but an instance of
+long continued good-nature, to use a mild phrase, of the many that have
+characterized our movements in the field. Well does the great discerner
+of the desires of men as well as delineator of the movements of their
+passions, make Crook Richard on his foully usurped and tottering throne
+exclaim,
+
+          "War must be brief when traitors brave the field."
+
+At a later day, in a holier cause, the line remains an axiom. Nor at the
+time of which we write was the policy much changed. While all admit the
+necessity, for the preservation of proper discipline, of having Rebel
+property for the use of the army taken formally under authorities duly
+constituted for the purpose, and not by indiscriminate license to the
+troops, none can be so blind as to fail to see the bent of the
+sympathies controlling the General in command. During the march to
+Middle-Borough, horses were taken along the route to supply deficiencies
+in the teams, and forage for their use, but in all cases the women who
+claimed to represent absent male owners--absent doubtless in arms--and
+who made no secret of their own Rebel inclinations, received
+Quarter-Master's receipts for their full value--generally, in fact,
+their own valuation. These receipts were understood to be presently
+payable. The interests of justice and our finances would have been much
+better subserved had their payment been conditioned upon the loyalty of
+the owner. A different policy would not have comported, however, with
+that which at an earlier day placed Lee's mansion on the Peninsula under
+double guard, and when you give it the in that case sorry merit of
+consistency, its best excuse is given.
+
+Beyond some lives lost by a force of Regulars who ventured too near the
+river without proper precautions the day after we occupied the Gap, and
+the loss of a Regimental head-quarters wagon, loaded with the officers'
+baggage, broken down upon a road on which the exhorting Colonel, after
+deliberate survey, had set his heart as the safest of roads from the
+Summit, nothing of note occurred during the stay. Our evacuation of the
+Gap was almost immediately followed by Rebel occupation.
+
+The statement that nothing of note occurred may, perhaps, be doing
+injustice to our little Dutch Doctor, who had the best of reasons for
+remembering the morning of our departure from Snicker's Summit. To the
+Doctor the mountain, with its rocks, seemed familiar ground. A Tyrolese
+by birth, he loved to talk of his mountain home and sing its lively
+airs. But that sweet home had one disadvantage. Their beasts of draught
+and burden were oxen, and the only horse in the village was a cart-horse
+owned by the Doctor's father. Of necessity, therefore, his horsemanship
+was defective, an annoying affair in the army. Many officers and men
+were desirous of seeing the Doctor mount and ride his newly purchased
+horse, and the Doctor was quite as anxious to evade observation. His
+saddle was on and blankets strapped as he surveyed the beast, now
+passing to this side and now to that, giving wide berth to heels that
+never kicked, and with his servant at hand, waiting until the last files
+of the Regiment had disappeared in the woods below. Not unobserved,
+however, for two of the Field and Staff had selected a clump of scrub
+pines close at hand for the purpose of witnessing the movement. A rock
+near by served him as a stand from which to mount. The horse was brought
+up, and the Doctor, after patting his head and rubbing his neck to
+assure himself of the good intentions of the animal, cautiously took his
+place in the saddle and adjusted his feet in the stirrups.
+
+The animal moved off quietly enough, until the Doctor, to increase his
+speed, touched him in the flank with his spur, when the novel sensation
+to the beast had the effect of producing a sudden flank movement, which
+resulted in the instant precipitation of the Doctor upon his back among
+the rocks and rough undergrowth. The horse stood quietly; there was no
+movement of the bushes among which the Doctor fell, and the mirth of the
+observers changed to fear lest an accident of a serious nature had
+occurred. The officers and servant rushed to the spot. Fortunately the
+fall had been broken somewhat by the bushes, but nevertheless plainly
+audible groans in Dutch escaped him, and when aware of the presence of
+the observers, exclamations in half broken English as to what the result
+might have been. The actual result was that the horse was forthwith
+condemned as "no goot" by the Doctor; an ambulance sent for, and
+necessity for the first time made him take a seat during the march in
+that vehicle, a practice disgracefully common among army surgeons. The
+horse in charge of the servant followed, but was ever after used as a
+pack. No amount of persuasion, even when way-worn and foot-sore from the
+march, could induce the Doctor to remount his charger.
+
+Middle-Borough, a pretty place near the Bull Run Range of mountains, was
+reached about ten o'clock in the forenoon of the day after leaving the
+Gap. After the first Bull Run battle the place was made use of, as
+indeed were all the towns as far up the country as Martinsburg, as a
+Rebel hospital. Some of the inmates in butternut and grey, with surgeons
+and officers on parole in like color, but gorgeous in gilding, were
+still to be seen about the streets. Greyheaded darkies and picaninnies
+peered with grinning faces over every fence. The wenches were busily
+employing the time allowed for the halt in baking hoe-cakes for the men.
+
+In front of the principal mansion of the place, owned by a Major in the
+Rebel service under Jackson, a small group of officers and men were
+interesting themselves in the examination of an antique naval sword that
+had just been purchased by a Sergeant from a venerable Uncle Ned, who
+stood hat in hand, his bald head exposed to the sun, bowing as each new
+comer joined the crowd.
+
+"Dat sword, gemmen," said the negro, politely and repeatedly bowing,
+"belonged to a Captain ob de Louisiana Tigers dat Hannar Amander and me
+nussed, case he came late and couldn't get into de hospitals or houses,
+dey was so full right after de fust big Bull Run fight. His thigh was
+all shot to pieces. He hadn't any money, and didn't seem to hab any
+friends but Hannar Amander."
+
+"Who is Hannah Amanda?" said one of the crowd.
+
+"My wife, sah," said the old man, crossing his breast slowly with his
+right hand and profoundly bowing.
+
+"Hannar Amander said de young man must be cared for, dat de good Lor
+would hold us 'countable if we let him suffer, so we gab him our bed,
+shared our little hoe-cake and rye coffee wid him, and Susan Matildar,
+my darter, and my wife dressed de wound as how de surgeon would tell us.
+But after about five days de surgeon shook his head and told de Captain
+he couldn't lib. De poor young man failed fast arter dat; he would moan
+and mutter all time ober ladies' names.
+
+"'Reckon you hab a moder and sisters?' said my wife to him one morning.
+
+"'Oh, God! yes,' said de fine-looking young man, for, as Hannar Amander
+said, he was purty as a pictur, and she'd often say how much would his
+moder and sisters gib if dey could only nuss him instead of us poor
+culled pussons. He said, too, he was no Rebel at heart--dat he was from
+de Norf, and a clerk in a store at New Orleans, and dey pressed him to
+go, and den he thought he'd better go as Captain if he had to go, and
+dey made him Captain. 'And now I must die a traitor! My God! when will
+my moder and sisters hear of dis, and what will dey say?' and he went on
+so and moaned; and when we found out he was from up Norf, and sorry at
+dat for being a Rebel, we felt all de warmer toward him. He called us
+bery kind, but moaned and went on so dreadfully dat my wife and darter
+didn't know what to do to comfort him. Dey bathed his head and made him
+cool drinks, but no use. 'It's not de pain ob de body,' said Hannar
+Amander to me, 'it's ob de heart--dat's what's de matter.'
+
+"'Hab you made your peace wid God, and are you ready for eberlasting
+rest?' said my wife to him.
+
+"'My God!' groaned he, 'dere's no peace or rest for me. I'm a sinner and
+a Rebel too. Oh, I can't die in such a cause!' and he half raised up,
+but soon sunk down again.
+
+"'We'm all rebels to de bressed God. His Grace alone can sab us,' said
+my wife, and she sung from dat good hymn
+
+          "'Tis God alone can gib
+              De bliss for which we sigh.'
+
+"'Susan Matildar, bring your Bible and read some.' While she said dis,
+de poor young man's eyes got full ob tears.
+
+"'Oh, my poor moder! how she used to read to me from dat book, and how
+I've neglected it,' said he.
+
+"Den Susan Matildar--she'd learned to read from her missus' little
+girls--read about all de weary laden coming unto de blessed Sabiour.
+Wheneber she could she'd read to him, and I went and got good old
+Brudder Jones to pray for him. By un by de young man begin to pray
+hisself, and den he smiled, and den, oh, I neber can forget how Hannar
+Amander clapped her hands and shouted 'Now I know he's numbered wid de
+army ob de Lor'! kase he smiles.' Dat was his first smile; but I can
+tell you, gemmen, it grew brighter and brighter, and by un by his face
+was all smiles, and he died saying he'd meet his moder and all ob us in
+Hebben, and praising de bressed Lor'!"
+
+The old man wiped his eyes, and there was a brief pause, none caring
+even in that rough, hastily collected crowd to break the silence that
+followed his plain and pathetic statement.
+
+"But how did you get the sword?" at last inquired one.
+
+"Before he died he said he was sorry he could not pay us for our
+kindness," resumed the old man. "Hannar Amander said dat shouldn't
+trouble him, our pay would be entered up in our 'ternal count.
+
+"And den he gab me dis sword and said I should keep it and sell it, and
+dat would bring me suffin'. And he gab Susan Matildar his penknife. De
+Secesh am 'quiring about de sword. I'd like to keep it, to mind de young
+man by, but we've all got him here," said the old man, pointing to his
+heart. "I'd sooner gib it to you boys dan sell it to de Rebels, but de
+Sargeant yer was good enough to pay me suffin for it, and den I cant
+forget dat good young man, I see his grave every day. We buried him at
+de foot ob our little lot, and Susan Matildar keeps flowers on his grave
+all day long. Her missus found out he was from de Norf and was sorry
+'fore he died he had been a Rebel, and she told Susan Matildar she
+wouldn't hab buried him dere. But Hannar Amander said dat if all de
+Rebels got into glory so nice dey'd do well; and de sooner dey are dere
+de better for us all, dis ole man say."
+
+This last brought a smile to the crowd, and a collection was taken up
+for the old man.
+
+"Bress you, gemmen! bress you! Served my Master forty-five years and hab
+nuffin to show for it. Our little patch Hannar Amander got, but I tries
+to sarve de Lor at de same time, and dere is a better 'count kept ob dat
+in a place where old Master dead and gone now pas' twenty years, will
+nebber hab a chance ob getting at de books."
+
+The old man had greatly won upon his hearers, when the bugle called them
+to their posts.
+
+Our corps from this place took the road to White Plains, near which
+little village they encamped in a wood for two nights and a day, while a
+snow-storm whitened the fields.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+          "Let the hawk stoop, the bird has flown,"
+
+said a boyish-faced officer who was known in the Regiment as the
+Poetical Lieutenant, to the Adjutant, as he pushed aside the canvas door
+of the Office Tent on one of those wintry evenings. The caller had left
+the studies of the Sophomoric year,--or rather his Scott, Byron, Burns,
+and the popular novelists of the day,--for the recruiting service in his
+native county. The day-dreams of the boy as to the gilded glory of the
+soldier had been roughly broken in upon by severe practical lessons, in
+tedious out-post duty and wearisome marches. He could remember, as could
+many others, how he had admired the noble and commanding air with which
+Washington stands in the bow of the well loaded boat as represented on
+the historic canvas, and the stern determination depicted upon the
+countenances of the rest of his Roman-nosed comrades--(why is it that
+our historic artists make all our Revolutionary Fathers Roman-nosed? If
+their pictures are faithful, where in the world do our swarms of pugs
+and aquilines come from worn by those claiming Revolutionary descent? Is
+it beyond their skill to make a pug or an aquiline an index to nobility
+of soul or heroic resolve?)--as they keep the frozen masses borne by
+that angry tide at safe distance from the frail bark--but he then felt
+nothing of the ice grating the sides of the vessel in which he hoped to
+make the voyage of life, nor shuddered at the wintry midnight blast that
+swept down the valley of the Delaware. His dreams had departed; but
+poetical quotations remained for use at every opportunity.
+
+"What's the matter now?" says the Adjutant.
+
+"One of the Aids just told me," rejoined the Lieutenant, "that the
+Rebels were in force in our front, and would contest the Rappahannock,
+while the possession of the Gap we have just left lets them in upon our
+rear."
+
+"The old game played out again," says the Adjutant. "Another string
+loose in the bag. Strategy in one respect resembles mesmerism--the
+object operated upon must remain perfectly quiet. Are we never to
+suppose that the Rebels have plans, and that their vigilance increases,
+and will increase, in proportion to the extremity of their case? Our
+theorists and routine men move armies as a student practises at chess,
+as if the whole field was under their control, and both armies at their
+disposal. With our immense resources, vigorous fighting and practical
+common sense would speedily suppress the Rebellion. Where are our old
+fighting stock of Generals? our Hookers, Heintzelmans, Hancocks, and men
+of like kidney? Why must their fiery energies succumb to a cold-blooded
+strategy, that wastes the materiel of war, and what is worse, fills our
+hospitals to no purpose? Those men have learned how to command from
+actual contact with men. The art of being practical, adapting one's self
+to emergencies, is not taught in schools. With some it is doubtless
+innate; with the great mass, it is a matter of education, such as is
+acquired from moving among men."
+
+          "We have the Pyrrhic dance as yet;
+             Where is our Pyrrhic phalanx gone?
+          Of two such lessons why forget
+             The nobler and the manlier one?"
+
+broke in our Poetical Lieutenant.
+
+"D--n your Pyrrhics," retorted the Adjutant, snappishly. "For the
+Pyrrhics of past days we have Empirics now. Our phalanxes of old have
+been led to victory by militia Colonels, who sprang from the thinking
+head of the people, glowing with the sacred fire of their cause. Do you
+not believe," continued he enthusiastically, "that the loyal masses who
+sprang into ranks at the insult upon Sumter would have found a leader
+long ere this worthy of their cause, whose rapid and decisive blows
+would have saved us disgraceful campaigns, had the nation been
+unencumbered by this ruin of a Regular Army, that has given us little
+else than a tremendous array of officers, many of them of the
+Pigeon-hole and Paper order,--beggarly lists of Privates,--Routine that
+must be carried out at any cost of success,--and Red Tape that
+everywhere represses patriotism? And then to think, too, of the
+half-heartedness and disaffection. How long must these sneaking
+Catilines in high places abuse our patience? But what can be expected
+from officers who are not in the service from patriotic motives, but
+rather from prospects of pay and position? End the war, and you will
+have men who are now unworthy Major and Brigadier Generals, subsiding
+into Captains and Lieutenants. Their movements indicate that _they_
+realize their position fully; but when will the country realize that
+'strategy' is played out?"
+
+"The whiskey at Division Head-quarters is played out, any way," said a
+Sergeant on duty in the Commissary Department, who had entered the tent
+while the Adjutant was speaking.
+
+          "'And not a drop to drink,'"
+
+rejoined the Lieutenant.
+
+"Then, by Heaven, we are lost," continued the Adjutant. "Strategy played
+out and our General of Division out of whiskey. Yes, sir! those mishaps
+end all further movement of this Grand Army of the Potomac. But when did
+you hear that?"
+
+"I was in the marquee of the Brigade Commissary when a Sergeant and a
+couple of privates on duty about Pigey's Head-quarters came in with a
+demijohn and a note to the Commissary, presenting the compliments of the
+General commanding Division, and at the same time the cash for four
+gallons of whiskey. The Captain read it carefully and told the Sergeant
+to tell the General that he didn't keep a dram-shop. I expected that
+this reply would make sport, and I concluded to wait awhile and see the
+thing out. In a few minutes the Sergeant returned, stating that he had
+not given that reply to the General, through fear, I suppose, but had
+stated that the Captain had made some excuse. He said further that Pigey
+said he was entirely out, and must have some.
+
+"'Tell him what I told you,' said the Captain, determinedly. Off the
+Sergeant started. I waited for his return outside, and asked him how
+Pigey took the answer. 'Took it?' said he, 'I didn't tell him about the
+dram-shop, but when he found I had none, he raved like mad--swore he was
+entirely out--had been since morning, and must and would have some. He
+d----d the Captain for being a temperance fanatic, and for bringing his
+fanatical notions into the army; and all the while he paced up and down
+his marquee like a tiger at a menagerie. At last he told me that I must
+return again and tell the Captain that it was a case of absolute
+necessity, and that he knew that there was a barrel of it among the
+Commissary stores, and that he must have his four gallons.'
+
+"I followed the Sergeant in, but he could not make it. The Captain had
+just turned it over to the Hospital.
+
+"So the Sergeant went back again with the empty demijohn. He told me
+afterwards that the General was so taken aback by his not getting any,
+that he sat quietly down on his camp stool, ran his fingers through his
+hair, pulled at his moustache, and then 'I knew,' said the Sergeant,
+'that a storm was brewing, and that the General was studying how to do
+justice to the subject. At length he rose slowly, kicked his hat that
+had fallen at his feet to one corner of the marquee, d----g it at the
+same time; d----d me for not getting it any how, and clenching his fists
+and walking rapidly up and down, d----d the Captain, his Brigadier, and
+everything belonging to the Brigade, until I thought it a little too
+hard for a man who had had a Sunday School education in his young days
+to listen to, and I left him still cursing.'"
+
+"He will court-martial the Captain," said the Colonel, who had entered
+the tent, "for signal contempt of the Regular Service. I recollect a
+charge of that kind preferred by a Regular Lieutenant against an
+Adjutant of the ---- Maine, down in the Peninsula. In one of our marches
+the Adjutant had occasion to ride rapidly by the Regiment to which the
+Lieutenant belonged. The Lieutenant hailed him--told him to stop. The
+Adjutant knowing his duty, and that he had no authority to halt him,
+continued his pace, but found himself for nearly a month afterward in
+arrest under a charge of 'Signal contempt for the Regular Service.'"
+
+Sigel's hardy Teutons lined the road in the vicinity of New Baltimore,
+through which village the route lay on the following day. Part of his
+corps had some days previously occupied the mountain gaps in the Bull
+Run range on the left. Other troops, led by a Commander whose strategy
+was singularly efficacious to keep him out of fights, were passing to
+the front, leaving a fighting General of undoubted prowess in European
+and American history, in the rear. Inefficient himself, and perhaps
+designedly so, his policy could not, with safety to his own reputation,
+allow of efficiency elsewhere.
+
+That night our Regiment encamped in one of the old pine fields common in
+Virginia. The softness of the decaying foliage of the pine which covered
+the ground as a cushion was admirably adapted to repose, and upon it the
+men rested, while the gentle evening breeze sighed among the boughs
+above them, as if in sympathy with disappointed hopes and sacrifices
+made in vain.
+
+"Stragglers and marauders, sir," said a Sergeant of the Provost Guard,
+saluting the Colonel, who was one of the circle lying cozily about the
+fire, pointing as he spoke to a squad of way-worn, wo-begone men under
+guard in his rear. "Here is a list of their offences. I was ordered to
+report them for punishment."
+
+"A new wrinkle, that," said the Colonel, as the Sergeant left. "Our
+Brigadier must be acting upon his own responsibility. Our General of
+Division would certainly never have permitted such an opportunity slip
+for employing the time of officers in Courts-martial. That list would
+have kept one of our Division Courts in session at least three weeks,
+and have given the General himself an infinite amount of satisfaction in
+examining his French authorities, and in strictures upon the Records.
+What have we here, any how?"
+
+No. 1. "Straggling to a persimmon tree on the road-side."
+
+"That man," said a Lieutenant, "when he saw our Brigadier coming up,
+presented him with a couple of persimmons very politely. But it was no
+go; the General ordered him under guard and eat the persimmons as part
+of the punishment."
+
+"Well," rejoined the Colonel, "we'll let you off with guard duty for the
+night."
+
+No. 2. "Killing a shoat while the Regiment halted at noon."
+
+The man charged was a fine-looking young fellow whose only preparation
+for the musket, when he enlisted, was previous practice with the yard
+stick in a dry goods establishment. Intelligent and good-natured, he was
+popular in the command, and was never known to let his larder suffer.
+
+"Was it a Rebel pig?" inquired a bystander.
+
+"A most rebellious pig," replied he, bowing to the Colonel. "He gave us
+a great amount of trouble, and rebelled to the last." A laugh followed,
+interrupted by the Colonel, who desired to hear the circumstances of the
+case.
+
+"Right after we had halted on the other side of New Baltimore,"
+continued the man, "I saw the pig rooting about a corn shock, and as my
+haversack was empty, and myself hungry, I thought I could dispose of
+part of him to advantage, and before I had time to reflect about the
+order, I commenced running after him. Several others followed, and some
+officers near by stood looking at us. After skinning my hands and knees
+in trying to catch him by throwing myself upon him, I finally caught
+him. When I had him skinned, I gave a piece to all the officers who saw
+me, saving only a ham for myself, and I was dressing it when up came a
+Lieutenant of the Provost Guard and demanded it. I debated the matter as
+well as a keen appetite would allow, and finally coming to the
+conclusion that I could not serve my country as I should, if half
+starved, I resolved to keep it, and refused him, and he reported me, and
+here I am with it at your service," clapping his hand on a well filled
+haversack.
+
+One-half of the meat was confiscated, but the novelty of the sergeant's
+patriotic plea saved him further penalty.
+
+No. 3. Caught in a negro shanty, in company with an old wench.
+
+The crowd laughed; while the subject, a tall cadaverous-looking fellow,
+protested earnestly that he was only waiting while the wench baked him a
+hoe-cake.
+
+"Guard duty for the night," said the Colonel.
+
+"Poor devil! He will have to keep awake, and can't sing--'Sleeping I
+dream, love, dream, love, of thee'"--said the poetical Lieutenant, who
+chanced to be one of the group.
+
+No. 4. Caught by the General Commanding Division, twenty feet high on a
+persimmon tree, and Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 on the ground below; also
+"Lying."
+
+"Another persimmon crowd. Every night we are troubled with the persimmon
+business," said the Colonel; "but what does the 'also Lying' mean?"
+
+"Why," said a frank fellow of the crowd, "you see when the old General
+came up, I said it was a picket station, and that the man up the tree
+was looking out for the enemy. It was a big thing, I thought, but the
+General didn't see it, and he swore he would persimmon us."
+
+"Which meant," said the Colonel, "that you would lose your persimmons,
+and go on extra police duty for forty-eight hours each."
+
+The crowd were lectured upon straggling, that too frequent offence of
+Volunteers, and after a severe reprimand dismissed.
+
+The country abounded in persimmon trees, and their golden fruit was a
+sore temptation to teeth sharpened on army crackers. As the season
+advanced, and persimmons became more palatable, crowds would thus be
+brought up nightly for punishment. This summary procedure was an
+innovation by the Brigadier upon the Red-Tape formulary of
+Courts-martial, so rigidly adhered to, and fondly indulged in, by the
+General of Division. The Brigadier would frequently himself dispose of
+delinquencies of the kind, telling the boys in a manner that made them
+feel that he cared for their welfare, that they had been entrusted to
+him by the country for its service, and that he considered himself under
+obligations to their relatives and friends to see that while under his
+command their characters received no detriment, and while becoming good
+soldiers they would not grow to be bad citizens. He made them realize,
+that although soldiers they were still citizens; and many a man has left
+him all the better for a reprimand which reminded him of duties to
+relatives and society at large. How much nobility of soul might be
+spared to the country with care of this kind, on the part of commanders.
+Punishment is necessary--but how many to whom it is intrusted forget
+that in giving it a moral effect upon society, care should be taken
+that it may operate beneficially upon the individual. The General who
+crushes the soul out of his command by exacting infamous punishments for
+trivial offences, is but a short remove from the commander who would
+basely surrender it to the enemy on the barest pretext. Punishment has
+too often been connected with prejudice against Volunteers in the Army
+of the Potomac, controlled as it has been too much by martinets. That a
+nation of freemen could have endured so long the contumely of a proud
+military leader when his incapacity was so apparent, will be a matter of
+wonder for the historian. The inconsistency that would follow the great
+Napoleon in modelling an army and neglect his example in giving it
+mobility, with eminent propriety leaves the record of its exploits to
+depend upon the pen of a scion of the unmilitary House of Orleans.
+
+But the decree "thus far shalt thou come," forced upon an honest but
+blindly indulgent President by the People, who will not forget that
+power is derived from them, had already gone forth, although not yet
+officially announced to the Army; and it was during the week at
+Warrenton, our halting-place on the morrow, that the army, with the
+citizens at home, rejoiced that the work of staying the proud waves of
+imbecility, as well as insult, to our Administration, had commenced. The
+history of reforms is one of the sacrifice of blood, money, and time.
+Frightful bills of mortality, shattered finances, nineteen months of
+valuable time, do not in this case admit of an exception.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+_Camp near Warrenton--Stability of the Republic--Measures, not Men,
+regarded by the Public--Removal of McClellan--Division Head-Quarters a
+House of Mourning--A Pigeon-hole General and his West Point
+Patent-Leather Cartridge-Box--Head-Quarter Murmurings and
+Mutterings--Departure of Little Mac and the Prince--Cheering by Word of
+Command--The Southern Saratoga--Rebel Regret at McClellan's Departure._
+
+
+Writers prone to treat of the instability of Republics, will find
+serious matter to combat in the array of events that culminated at
+Warrenton. Without the blood that has usually characterized similar
+events in the history of Monarchies, in fact with scarcely a ripple upon
+the surface of our national affairs, a great military chieftain, or to
+speak truly, a commander who had endeavored, and who had the grandest of
+opportunities to become such, passed from his proud position as the
+leader of the chief army of the Republic, to the obscurity of private
+life. Proffered to a public, pliant, because anxious that its
+representatives in the field should have a worthy Commander, by an
+Administration eager to repair the disaster of Bull Run,--puffed into
+favor by almost the entire press of the country, the day had been when
+the loyalty of the citizen was measured by his admiration of General
+McClellan.
+
+Never did a military leader assume command so auspiciously. The
+resources of a mighty nation were lavishly contributed to the materiel
+of his army. Its best blood stood in his ranks. Indulged to an almost
+criminal extent by an Administration that in accordance with the wishes
+of the masses it represented, bowed at his beck and was overly
+solicitous to do his bidding, no wonder that this ordinary mind became
+unduly inflated. He could model his army upon the precedents set by the
+great Napoleon; he could surround himself by an immense Staff--the
+talent of which, however, but poorly represented the vigor of his
+army,--for nepotism and favoritism interfered to prevent that, as they
+will with common men; drill and discipline could make his army
+efficient,--for his subordinates were thorough and competent, and his
+men were apt pupils; but he himself could not add to all these the
+crowning glories of the field. Every thing was there but genius, that
+God-given gift; and that he did not prove to be a Napoleon resulted
+alone from a lack of brains.
+
+Now that the glare of the rocket has passed from our sky, and its stick
+has fallen quietly enough among the pines of New Jersey, citizens have
+opportunity for calm reflection. We are not justified, perhaps, in
+attributing to McClellan all the evils and errors that disfigure his
+tenure of office. Intellect equal to the position he could not create
+for himself, and ninety-nine out of one hundred men of average ability
+would not have descended from his balloon-like elevation with any better
+grace. It is in the last degree unjust to brand with disloyalty, conduct
+that seems to be a result natural enough to incompetency. That upon
+certain occasions he may have been used for disloyal purposes by
+designing men, may be the consequence of lack of discrimination rather
+than of patriotism.
+
+Whatever might have induced his conduct of the war, the nation has
+learned a lesson for all time. Generals who had grown grey in honorable
+service were rudely set aside for a Commander whose principal merit
+consisted in his having published moderately well compiled military
+books. Their acquiescence redounds to their credit; but their continued
+and comparatively calm submission in after times, when that General,
+regardless of soldierly merit, placed in high and honorable positions
+relatives and intimate friends, who could be but mere place-men,
+dependent entirely upon him for their honors, and committed to his
+interests, is strong proof of devoted patriotism. Slight hold had these
+neophytes upon the stern matter-of-fact fighting Generals, or the
+equally devoted and patriotic masses in ranks. In their vain glory they
+murmured and muttered during and subsequent to this week at Warrenton,
+as they had threatened previously, in regard to the removal of
+McClellan. They knew not the Power that backed the Bayonet. In the eye
+of the unreserved and determined loyalty of the masses, success was the
+test of popularity with any Commander. Not the shadow of an excuse
+existed for any other issue. Our resources of the materiel of war were
+well nigh infinite. Men could be had almost without number, at least
+equal to the Rebels in courage. There was, then, no excuse for inaction,
+and none knew it better than our reflecting rank and file.
+
+The effort to inspire popularity for McClellan had been untiring by his
+devotees in position in the army. In the outset it was successful. Like
+their friends at home, the men in ranks, during the dark days that
+succeeded Bull Run, eagerly caught at a name that received such
+honorable mention. That this flush of popularity did not increase until
+it became a steady flame like that which burned within the breasts of
+the veterans of the old French Empire, is because its subject lacked the
+commanding ability, decision of character, and fiery energy, that made
+statesmen do reverence, turned the tide of battle to advantage, and
+swept with resistless force over the plains of Italy and the mountains
+of Tyrol.
+
+It was with mingled feelings of pleasure and uncertainty, caused by the
+change, that the Regiment broke to the front in column of company, and
+encamped on a beautifully wooded ridge about two miles north of
+Warrenton. Pleasure upon account of the change--as any change must be
+for the better,--uncertainty, as to its character and extent. In their
+doubtful future, Generals shifted position, and succeeded each other,
+very much as dark specks appear and pass before unsteady vision. Who
+would be the successor? Would the change be radical? were questions that
+were discussed in all possible bearings around cheerful camp-fires.
+
+Whatever the satisfaction among subordinate officers and the ranks,
+Division Head-quarters was a house of mourning. To the General removed
+solely it owed its existence. Connected with his choice Corps, it had
+basked in the sunshine of his favor. With the removal already ordered,
+"the dread of something worse"--a removal nearer home was apprehended.
+As a Field Commander, the officer upon whose shoulders rested the
+responsibilities of the Division, was entirely unknown previously to his
+assuming command. His life hitherto had been of such a nature as not to
+add to his capacity as a Commander. Years of quiet clerkly duty in the
+Topographical Department may, and doubtless did in his case, make an
+excellent engineer or draughtsman, but they afford few men opportunities
+for improvement in generalship. During the McClellan regime this source
+furnished a heavy proportion of our superior officers. Why, would be
+difficult to say on any other hypothesis than that of favoritism. Their
+educational influences tend to a defensive policy, which history proves
+Generals of ability to have indulged in only upon the severest
+necessity. To inability to rise above these strictures of the school,
+may be traced the policy which has portrayed upon the historic page, to
+our lasting disgrace as a nation, the humiliating spectacle of a mighty
+and brave people, with resources almost unlimited, compelled for nearly
+two years to defend their Capital against armies greatly inferior to
+their own in men and means.
+
+Independently of these educational defects, as they must be called,
+there was nothing in either the character or person of the Division
+Commander to command respect or inspire fear. Eccentric to a most
+whimsical degree, his oddities were the jest of the Division, while they
+were not in the least relieved by his extreme nervousness and fidgety
+habits of body. That there was nothing to inspire fear is, however,
+subject to exception, as his whims kept subordinates in a continual
+fever. The art of being practical--adapting himself to circumstances--he
+had never learned. It belongs to the department of Common Sense, in
+which, unfortunately, there has never been a professor at West Point.
+His after life does not seem to have been favorable to its acquirement.
+Withal, the hauteur characteristic to Cadets clung to him, and on many
+occasions rendered him unfortunate in his intercourse with volunteer
+officers. Politeness with him, assumed the airs and grimaces of a French
+dancing-master, which personage he was not unfrequently and not inaptly
+said to resemble. Displeasure he would manifest by the oddest of
+gestures and volleys of the latest oaths, uttered in a nervous, half
+stuttering manner. Socially, his extensive educational acquirements made
+him a pleasant companion, and with a friend it was said he would drink
+as deep and long as any man in the Army of the Potomac. Once crossed,
+however, his malignity would be manifested by the most intolerable and
+petty persecution.
+
+"He has no judgment," said a Field-Officer of a Regiment of his command;
+a remark which, by the way, was a good summary of his character.
+
+"Why?" replied the officer to whom he was speaking.
+
+"I was out on picket duty," rejoined the other, "yesterday. We had an
+unnecessarily heavy Reserve, and one half of the men in it were allowed
+to rest without their belts and boxes. The General in the afternoon paid
+us a visit, and seeing this found fault, that the men were not kept
+equipped; observing at the same time that they could rest equally well
+with their cartridge boxes on; that when he was a Cadet at West Point he
+had ascertained by actual practice that it could be done."
+
+"Do you recollect, General," I remarked, "whether you had forty rounds
+of ball cartridge in your box then?"
+
+"He said he did not know that that made any difference."
+
+"Now considering that the fact of the boxes being filled makes all the
+difference, I say," continued the officer, "that the man who makes a
+remark such a the General made, is devoid of judgment."
+
+But he was connected both by ties of friendship and consanguinity with
+the hitherto Commander of the Army of the Potomac. His Adjutant-General
+was related to the same personage. The position of the latter, for which
+he was totally unfitted by his habits, was perhaps a condition precedent
+to the appointment of the General of Division.
+
+The fifth of November, a day destined to become celebrated hereafter in
+American as in English history, dawned not less inauspiciously upon the
+Head-quarters of the Corps. They too could not appreciate the dry humor
+of the order that commanded Little Mac to report at Trenton. They
+thought alone of the unwelcome reality--that it was but an American way
+of sending him to Coventry. The Commander of the Corps had been a great
+favorite at the Head-quarters of the army--perhaps because in this old
+West Point instructor the haughty dignity and prejudice against
+volunteers which characterized too many Regular officers, had its
+fullest personification. His Corps embraced the largest number of
+Regular officers. In some Regiments they were ridiculously, and for
+Uncle Sam expensively, plentiful,--some Companies having two or three
+Captains, two or three First or Second Lieutenants,--while perhaps the
+enlisted men in the Regiment did not number two hundred. But these
+supernumeraries were Fitz John's favorites, and whether they performed
+any other labor than sporting shoulder straps, regularly visiting the
+Paymasters, adjusting paper collars and cultivating moustaches, was a
+matter of seemingly small consequence, though during depressed national
+finances.
+
+The little patriotism that animated many of the officers attached to
+both of these Head-quarters, did not restrain curses deep if not loud.
+Pay and position kept them in the army at the outbreak of the
+Rebellion; and pay and position alone prevented their taking the same
+train from Warrenton that carried away their favorite Commander. A
+telegram of the Associated Press stated a few days later that a list of
+eighty had been prepared for dismissal. What evil genius averted this
+benefit to the country, the War Department best knows. It required no
+vision of the night, nor gift of soothsaying, to foretell the trouble
+that would result from allowing officers in important positions to
+remain in the army, who were under the strongest obligations to the
+General removed, devotedly attached to him, and completely identified
+with, and subservient to, his interests. It might at least be supposed
+that his policy would be persevered in, and that his interests would not
+suffer. So far the reform was not radical.
+
+"Colonel," said one of these martinets who occupied a prominent position
+upon the Staff of Prince Fitz John, as with a look of mingled contempt
+and astonishment he pointed to a Lieutenant who stood a few rods distant
+engaged in conversation with two privates of his command, "do you allow
+commissioned officers to converse with privates?"
+
+"Why not, sir? Those three men were intimate acquaintances at home. In
+fact, the Lieutenant was a clerk in a dry-goods establishment in which
+one of the privates was a junior partner."
+
+"All wrong, sir," replied the martinet. "They should approach a
+commissioned officer through a Sergeant. The Inspecting Officer will
+report you for laxity of discipline in case it continues, and place you
+under arrest."
+
+The Brigadier, when he heard of this conversation, intimated that should
+the Inspecting Officer attempt it, he would leave the Brigade limits
+under guard; and it was not attempted.
+
+Nonsense such as this is not only contemptible but criminal, when
+contrasted with the kind fellowship of Washington for his men,--his
+solicitude for their sufferings at Valley Forge,--Putnam sharing his
+scanty meals with privates of his command,--Napoleon learning the wants
+of his veterans from their own lips, and tapping a Grenadier familiarly
+upon the shoulder to ask the favor of a pinch from his snuff-box. Those
+worthies may rest assured that marquees pitched at Regulation distance,
+and access through non-commissioned officers, will not, if natural
+dignity be wanting, create respect. How greatly would the efficiency of
+the army have been increased, had the true gentility that characterized
+the noble soul of Colonel Simmons, who fell at Gaines' Mills, and that
+will always command reverence, been more general among his brother
+officers of the Regular Army.
+
+These evil results should not, however, lead to a wholesome condemnation
+of West Point. The advantages of the Institution have been abused, or
+rather neglected, by the great masses of the Loyal States. In our moral
+matter-of-fact business communities it has been too generally the case,
+that cadets have been the appointees of political favoritism, regardless
+of merit; and that the wild and often worthless son of influential and
+wealthy parents, who had grown beyond home restraint, and who gave
+little indication of a life of honor or usefulness, would be turned into
+the public inclosure at West Point to square his morals and his toes at
+the same time at public expense, and the act rejoiced at as a good
+family riddance. Thus in the Loyal States, the profession of arms had
+fallen greatly into disrepute previously to the outbreak of the
+Rebellion, and instead of being known as a respectable vocation, was
+considered as none at all. Had military training to some extent been
+connected with the common school education of the land, we would have
+gained in health, and would have been provided with an able array of
+officers for our noble army of Volunteers. Among other preparations for
+their infamous revolt, the Rebels did not fail to give this especial
+prominence. The Northern States have been great in peace; the material
+is being rapidly educated that will make them correspondingly great in
+war.
+
+"November's surly blasts" were baring the forests of foliage, when the
+order for the last Review by McClellan was read to the Troops. Mutinies
+and rumors of mutinies "from the most reliable sources" had been
+suspended above the Administration, like the threatening sword of
+Damocles; but Abraham's foot was down at last, and beyond murmurings and
+mutterings at disaffected Head-Quarters no unsoldierly conduct marked
+the reception of the order. So far from the "heavens being hung with
+black," as a few man-worshippers in their mad devotion would have
+wished, nature smiled beautifully fair. Such a sight could only be
+realized in Republican America. A military Commander of the greatest
+army upon the Continent, elevated in the vain-glory of dependent
+subordinates into a quasi-Dictatorship, was suddenly lowered from his
+high position, and his late Troops march to this last Review with the
+quiet formality of a dress parade. What cared those stern,
+self-sacrificing men in ranks, from whose bayonets that brilliant sun
+glistened in diamond splendor, for the magic of a name--the majesty of a
+Staff, gorgeous, although not clothed in the uniform desired by its late
+Chief. The measure of payment for toil and sacrifice with them, was
+progress in the prosecution of their holy cause. The thunders of the
+artillery that welcomed _him_ with the honor due to his rank, reminded
+_them_ to how little purpose, through shortcomings upon his part, those
+same pieces had thundered upon the Peninsula and at Antietam.
+
+Massed in close columns by division along the main road leading to
+Warrenton, the troops awaited the last of the grand pageants that had
+made the Army of the Potomac famous for reviews. Its late Commander, as
+he gracefully sat his bay, had not the nonchalance of manner that he
+manifested while reading a note and accompanying our earnest President
+in a former review at Sharpsburg; nor was the quiet dignity that he
+usually exhibited when at the head of his Staff, apparent. His manner
+seemed nervous, his look doubly anxious; troubled in the present, and
+solicitous as to the future. Conscious, too, doubtless, as he faced a
+nation's Representatives in arms, how he had "kept the word of promise
+to the ear," and how "he had broken it to the hope;" how while his
+reviews had revealed a mighty army of undoubted ability and eagerness
+for the fight, his indecision or proneness to delay had made its
+campaigns the laughing-stock of the world. His brilliant Staff clattered
+at his heels; but glittering surroundings were powerless to avert the
+memories of a winter's inactivity at Manassas, the delay at Yorktown,
+the blunders on the Chickahominy, or the disgrace of the day after
+Antietam. How closely such memories thronged upon this thinking
+soldiery, and how little men who leave families and business for the
+field, from the necessity of the case, care for men if their measures
+are unsuccessful, may be imagined, when the fact is known that this
+same Little Mac, once so great a favorite through efforts of the Press
+and officers with whom he had peopled the places in his gift, received
+his last cheers from some Divisions of that same Army by word of
+command.
+
+          "A long farewell to all his greatness."
+
+Imbecile in politics as in war, he cannot retrieve it by cringing to
+party purposes. The desire that actuates our masses and demands able and
+earnest leaders has long since dissolved party lines.
+
+This leave-taking was followed a few days later by that of the Corps
+Commander. Troubled looks, shadows that preceded his dark future, were
+plainly visible as the Prince passed up and down the lines of his late
+command.
+
+Another day passed, and with light hearts the men brightened their
+muskets for a Review by their new Commander, Major-General Burnside, or
+"Burney," as they popularly called the Hero of Carolina celebrity.
+
+But the day did not seem to be at hand that should have completed the
+reform by sweeping and garnishing disaffected, not to say disloyal
+Head-Quarters--removing from command men who were merely martinets, and
+who were in addition committed body and soul to the interests of their
+late Commander, and who, had they been in receipt of compensation from
+Richmond, could not have more completely labored by their half-hearted,
+inefficient, and tyrannizing course, to crush the spirit of our
+soldiery.
+
+"What's the matter with Old Pigey?" inquired a Sergeant, detailed on
+guard duty at Division Head-Quarters, as he saluted his Captain, on one
+of these evenings at Warrenton.
+
+"Why?" rejoined the Captain.
+
+"The General," continued the Sergeant, "was walking up and down in front
+of his marquee almost all of last night, talking to himself, muttering,
+and at almost every other step stamping and swearing. He had a bully old
+mad on, I tell you, Captain. He went it in something of this style."
+
+And the sergeant himself strode up and down, muttering and stamping and
+swearing, to the great amusement of the Captain and some bystanders.
+
+The unwillingness to bow to the dictation of the President as
+Commander-in-Chief in his most righteous removal of their favorite,
+caused much heart-burning, and gave rise to much disloyal conduct. That
+it was tolerated at all was owing to the unappreciated indulgence or
+hesitation of the Administration, lest it should undertake too much. The
+operation, to have been skilful and complete, required nerve. That
+article so necessary for this crisis is in the ranks, and let us trust
+that for the future it will be found in greater abundance at Washington.
+
+The Southern Saratoga, as Warrenton has been styled among the
+fashionables of the South, has much to commend it in situation and
+scenery, as a place of residence. The town itself is an odd jumble of
+old and new buildings, and is badly laid out, or rather not laid out at
+all, as the streets make all possible angles with each other. Yankee
+enterprise appears to have had something to do with the erection of the
+later buildings. Like other towns of that neighborhood its cemetery is
+heavily peopled with Rebel dead. At the time of our occupancy many of
+its larger buildings were still occupied as hospitals.
+
+On the day of McClellan's departure the streets were crowded with
+officers and men, and the sympathies of the Rebel residents seemed
+strangely in unison with those of the chieftain's favorites. The
+representatives of the clannish attachments which made McClellanism a
+species of Masonry in the army, were there in force. In these banded
+interests brotherly love took the place of patriotism. Little wonder!
+looking at the record of the McClellan campaigns, that the Rebels
+present fraternized with these devotees in their grief.
+
+"You have thrown away your ablest commander," said an elderly man, of
+intelligent and gentlemanly appearance, clad in the uniform of a surgeon
+of the Rebel army, who stood conversing with one of our own surgeons, on
+the sidewalk of the main street of the place, while the crowd gathered
+to witness the departure of the General.
+
+"Do you really think so?" rejoined the Union Surgeon, as he earnestly
+eyed the speaker.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the Rebel, emphatically. "It is not only my opinion but
+the opinion of our Generals of ability, that in parting with McClellan
+you lose the only General you have who has shown any strategic ability."
+
+"If that be your opinion, sir," was the decided reply, "the sooner we
+are rid of him the better."
+
+And to this reply the country says, Amen!
+
+"But what a shame it is that military genius is so little appreciated by
+the Administration, and that he is removed just at this time! Why, I
+heard our Colonel say that he had heard the General say, that in a few
+days more, he would have won a decisive victory," remarked a young
+officer, in a jaunty blue jacket, to a companion, gesticulating as he
+spoke, with a cigar between the first and second fingers of his right
+hand.
+
+An older officer, who overheard the remark, observed, drily:--"He was
+not removed for what he would do, but for what he had done."
+
+"And for what he had not done," truthfully added another.
+
+Never had General, burdened with so many sins of omission and
+commission, as the conversation indicated, been so leniently dealt with,
+now that the Rebels in their favorite, and with him successful game of
+hide and seek, had again given him the slip, and were only in his front
+to annoy. As they had it completely in their power to prevent a general
+engagement at that point, his remark as to what would have been done was
+a very rotten twig, caught at in the vain hope of breaking his fall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+_A Skulker and the Dutch Doctor--A Review of the Corps by Old Joe--A
+Change of Base; what it means to the Soldier, and what to the
+Public--Our Quarter-Master and General Hooker--The Movement by the Left
+Flank--A Division General and Dog-driving--The Desolation of Virginia--A
+Rebel Land-Owner and the Quarter-Master--"No Hoss, Sir!"--The Poetical
+Lieutenant unappreciated--Mutton or Dog?--Desk Drudgery and Senseless
+Routine._
+
+
+"It's about time, Bill, for you to have another sick on," said a lively
+lad, somewhat jocosely, as he rubbed away at his musket-barrel, on one
+of our last mornings at the Camp, near Warrenton. "Fighting old Joe has
+the Corps now, and he will review us to-day, the Captain says, and after
+that look out for a move."
+
+"Don't say," drawled out the man addressed; a big, lubberly fellow,
+famous in the Regiment for shirking duty--who, when picket details were
+expected, or a march in prospect, would set a good example of
+punctuality in promptly reporting at Surgeon's call, or as the Camp
+phrase had it, "stepping up for his quinine." "Well," continued he,
+"Lord knows what I'll do. I've had the rheumatics awful bad," clapping
+at the same time one hand on his hip, and the other on his right
+shoulder, "the last day or two, and then the chronical diarrhoear."
+
+"You had better go in on rheumatism, Bill," broke in the first speaker.
+"The Doctor will let you off best on that."
+
+"That's played out, isn't it, Bill," chimed in another; and to Bill's
+disgust, as he continued, "It don't go with the little Dutch Doctor
+since Sharpsburg. Every time his Company's turn would come for picket,
+while we were at that Camp, Bill would be a front-rank man at the
+Hospital, with a face as long as a rail, and twisted as if he had just
+had all his back teeth pulled. The little Dutchman would yell out
+whenever he would see him--'What for you come? Eh? You tam shneak.
+Rheumatism, eh? In hip?' And the Doctor would punch his shoulder and
+hip, and pinch his arms and legs until Bill would squirm like an eel
+under a gig. 'Here, Shteward,' said the Doctor the last time, as he
+scribbled a few words on a small piece of paper, 'Take this; make
+application under left ear, and see if dis tam rheumatism come not out.'
+Bill followed the Steward, and in a few minutes came back to quarters
+ornamented with a fly-blister as big as a dollar under his left ear.
+Next morning Bill didn't report, but he's been going it since on
+diarrhoea."
+
+"He wasn't smart, there," observed another. "He ought to have done as
+little Burky of our mess did. He'd hurry to quarters, take the blister
+off, clap it on again next morning when he'd report, and he'd have the
+little Dutchman swearing at the blister for not being 'wors a tam.'"
+
+Bill took the sallies of the crowd with the quiet remark that their turn
+for the sick list would come some day.
+
+The Review on that day was a grand affair. The fine-looking manly form
+of Old Joe, as, in spite of a bandaged left ancle not yet recovered
+from the wound at Antietam, and that kept the foot out of the stirrup,
+he rode down the line at a gait that tested the horsemanship of his
+followers, was the admiration of the men. In his honest and independent
+looking countenance they read, or thought they could, character too
+purely republican to allow of invidious distinctions between men, who,
+in their country's hour of need, had left civil pursuits at heavy
+sacrifices, and those who served simply because the service was to them
+the business of life. With hearts that kept lively beat with the
+regimental music as they marched past their new Commander, they rejoiced
+at this mark of attention to the necessities of the country, which
+removed an Officer, notorious as a leader of reserves, and placed them
+under the care of a man high on the list of fighting Generals.
+"Waterloo," says the historic or rather philosophic novelist of France,
+"was a change of front of the universe." The results of that contest are
+matter of record, and justify the remark. At Warrenton a great Republic
+changed front, and henceforth the milk and water policy of conciliating
+"our Southern Brethren" ranked as they are behind bristling bayonets, or
+of intimidating them by a mere show of force, must give way to active
+campaigning and heavy blows.
+
+A rainy, misty morning a day or two after the review, saw the Corps pass
+through Warrenton, en route for the Railroad Junction, commencing the
+change of direction by the left flank, ordered by the new Commander of
+the Army. The halt for the night was made in a low piece of woodland
+lying south of the railroad. In column of Regiments the Division
+encamped, and in a space of time incredible to those not familiar with
+such scenes, knapsacks were unslung and the smoke of a thousand
+camp-fires slowly struggled upwards through the falling rain. Its
+pelting was not needed to lull the soldiers, weary from the wet march
+and slippery roads, to slumber.
+
+At early dawn they left the Junction and its busy scenes--its lengthy
+freight-trains, and almost acres of baggage-wagons, to the rear, and
+struck the route assigned the Grand Division, of which they were part,
+for Fredericksburg. "A change of base" our friends will read in the
+leaded headings of the dailies, and pass it by as if it were a transfer
+of an article of furniture from one side of the room to the other.
+Little know they how much individual suffering from heavy knapsacks and
+blistered feet, confusion of wagon-trains, wrangling and swearing of
+teamsters, and vexation in almost infinite variety, are comprised in
+these few words. It is the army that moves, however, and the host of
+perplexities move with it, all unknown to the great public, and
+transient with the actors themselves as bubbles made by falling rain
+upon the lake. The delays incident to a wagon-train are legion.
+Occurring among the foremost wagons, they increase so rapidly that
+notwithstanding proper precaution and slowness in front, a rear-guard
+will often be kept running. The profanity produced by a single chuck
+hole in a narrow road appears to increase in arithmetical proportion as
+the wagons successively approach, and teamsters in the rear find their
+ingenuity taxed to preserve their reputation for the vice with their
+fellows.
+
+Why negroes are not more generally employed as teamsters is a mystery.
+They are proverbially patient and enduring. Both the interests of
+humanity and horseflesh would be best subserved by such employment, and
+the ranks would not be reduced by the constant and heavy details of
+able-bodied men for that duty. Capital and careful horsemen are to be
+found among the contrabands of Virginia, and many a poor beast, bad in
+harness because badly treated, would rejoice at the change.
+
+Quarter-masters, Wagon-masters, Commissaries, _et id genus omne_, have
+their peculiar troubles. Our Regiment was particularly favored in a
+Quarter-Master of accomplished business tact, whose personal supervision
+over the teams during a march was untiring, and whose tongue was equally
+tireless in rehearsing to camp crowds, after the march was over, the
+troubles of the day, and how gloriously he surmounted them. In his
+department he held no divided command.
+
+"Get out of my train with that ambulance. You can't cut me off in that
+style," he roared in an authoritative manner to an ambulance driver, who
+had slipped in between two of his wagons on the second day of our march.
+
+"My ambulance was ordered here, sir! I have General ----" The driver's
+reply was here interrupted by the abrupt exclamation of the
+Quarter-Master--
+
+"I don't care a d--n if you have Old Joe himself inside. I command this
+train and you must get out." And get out the driver did, at the
+intimation of his passenger, who, to the surprise of the Quarter-Master,
+notwithstanding his assertion, turned out to be no less a personage than
+General Hooker himself.
+
+"It is the law of the road," said the General, good-humoredly--candid to
+his own inconvenience--"and we must obey it."
+
+This ready obedience upon the part of the General was better in effect
+than any order couched in the strongest terms for the enforcement of
+discipline. The incident was long a frequent subject of conversation,
+and added greatly to his popularity as a commander. The men were fond
+of contrasting it with the conduct of the General of Division, who but a
+few days later cursed a poor teamster with all manner of profanely
+qualifying adjectives because he could not give to the General and his
+Staff the best part of a difficult road.
+
+But perhaps the men held their General of Division to too strict an
+accountability. He was still laboring under the spell of Warrenton. His
+nervous system had doubtless been deranged by the removal of his
+favorite Chief, or rather Dictator, as he had hoped he might be. "No one
+could command the army but McClellan," the General had said in his
+disgust--a disgust that would have driven him from the service, but
+that, fortunately for himself and unfortunately for his country, it was
+balanced by the pay and emoluments of a Brigadiership. Reluctant to
+allow Burnside quietly, a Caesar's opportunity to "cover his baldness
+with laurels," his whimsical movements, now galloping furiously and
+purposeless from front to rear, and from rear to front of his command,
+cursing the officers,--and that for fancied neglect of duty,--poorly
+concealed the workings of his mind.
+
+In one of these rapid rides, his eye caught sight of a brace of young
+hounds following one of the Sergeants.
+
+"Where did those dogs come from?"
+
+"They have followed me from the last wood, sir."
+
+"Let them go, sir, this instant. Send them back, sir. D--n you, sir,
+I'll teach you to respect private property," replied the General,
+deploying his staff at the same time to assist in driving the dogs back,
+as notwithstanding the efforts of the Sergeant to send them to the rear,
+they crouched at a respectful distance and eyed him wistfully. "D--n
+you, sir, I am the General commanding the Division, sir, and by G--d,
+sir, I command you, as such, to send those dogs back, sir!" nervously
+stammered the General as he rode excitedly from one side of the road to
+the other in front of the Sergeant.
+
+The affair speedily became ridiculous. Driving dogs was evidently with
+the General a more congenial employment than manoeuvring men. But his
+efforts in the one proved as unsuccessful as in the other, as
+notwithstanding the aid afforded by his followers, the dogs would turn
+tail but for a short distance. After swearing most _dogmatically_, as an
+officer remarked, he turned to resume his ride to the head of the
+column, but had not gone ten yards before there was a whistle for the
+dogs. Squab was sent back to ferret out the offender. The whistling
+increased, and shortly the whole Staff and the Regimental officers were
+engaged in an attempt at its suppression. But in vain. Whistling in
+Company A, found echoes in Company B; and after some minutes of
+fruitless riding hither and thither the General was forced to retire
+under a storm of all kinds of dog-calls, swelled in volume by the
+adjacent Regiments.
+
+That authority should be thus abused by the General in endeavoring to
+enforce his ridiculous order, and set at naught by the men in thus
+mocking at obedience, is to be deprecated. The men took that method of
+rebuking the inconsistency, which would permit Regular and many
+Volunteer Regiments to be followed by all manner of dogs,
+
+          "Both mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound,
+          And cur of low degree,"
+
+and yet refuse them the accidental company of but a brace of canines. A
+simple report of the offender, supposing the Sergeant to have been one,
+would have been the proper course, and would have saved a General of
+Division the disgrace of being made a laughing-stock for his command.
+
+"Talent is something: but tact is everything," said an eminent man, and
+nowhere has the remark a more truthful application than in the army.
+
+A favorite employment after the evening halt, during this three days'
+march, was the gathering of mushrooms. The old fields frequent along the
+route abounded with them, and many a royal meal they furnished. To
+farmers' sons accustomed to the sight of close cultivation, these old
+fields, half covered with stunted pines, sassafras, varieties of spice
+wood, and the never-failing persimmon tree, were objects of curiosity.
+It was hard to realize that we were marching through a country once
+considered the Garden of America, whose bountiful supplies and large
+plantations had become classic through the pen of an Irving and other
+famous writers. Fields princely in size, but barren as Sahara;
+buildings, once comfortable residences, but now tottering into ruin, are
+still there, but "all else how changed." The country is desolation
+itself. Game abounds, but whatever required the industry of man for its
+continuance has disappeared.
+
+Civilization, which in younger States has felled forests, erected
+school-houses, given the fertility of a garden to the barren coast of
+the northern Atlantic and the wild-wood of the West, could not coalesce
+with the curse of slavery, and Virginia has been passed by in her onward
+march. This field of pines that you see on our right, whose tops are so
+dense and even as to resemble at a distance growing grain, may have been
+an open spot over which Washington followed his hounds in
+ante-revolutionary days. The land abounds in memories. The very names of
+the degenerate families who eke out a scanty subsistence on some corner
+of what was once an extensive family seat, remind one of the old
+Colonial aristocracy. Reclamation of the soil, as well as deliverance of
+the enslaved, must result from this civil war. Both worth fighting for.
+So "Forward, men," "Guide right," as in very truth we are in Divine
+Providence guided.
+
+The long-haired, furtive-looking fathers and sons, representatives of
+all this ancient nobility, after having given over their old homesteads
+to their female or helpless male slaves, and massed their daughters and
+wives apparently in every tenth house, were keeping parallel pace with
+us on the lower bank of the Rappahannock. It was the inevitable logic of
+the law of human progress, declaring America to be in reality the land
+of the free, that compelled these misguided, miserable remnants of an
+aristocracy, to shiver in rags around November camp-fires. "They are
+joined to their idols"--but now that after years of legislative
+encroachment upon the rights of suffering humanity, they engage in a
+rebellious outbreak against a God-given Government, we will not
+let them alone in an idolatry that desolates the fair face of nature
+and causes such shameful degeneracy of the human race. Justice! slow,
+but still sure and retributive justice! How sublimely grand in her
+manifestations! After years of patient endurance of the proud contumely
+of South Carolina, New England granite blocks up the harbor of
+Charleston--Massachusetts volunteers cook their coffee in the fireplaces
+of the aristocratic homesteads of Beaufort, and negroes rally to a
+roll-call at Bunker Hill, but as volunteers in a war which insures them
+liberty, and not as slaves, as was once vainly prophesied.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Who commands you?" inquired a long, lean, slightly stooped,
+sallow-faced man of about fifty, with eyes that rolled in all directions
+but towards the officer he addressed, and long hair thrown back of his
+ears in such a way as to make up an appearance that would readily
+attract the attention of a police officer.
+
+"I command this Regiment, sir," replied the Colonel, who, at the end of
+the day's march, was busied in directing a detail where to pitch the
+Head-quarter tents.
+
+"Goin' to stay yer--right in this meadow?" continued the man, in the
+half negro dialect common with the whites of the South.
+
+"That is what we purpose doing, sir. Are you the owner?"
+
+"Y-a-a-s," drawled out the man, pulling his slouch felt still further
+over his eyes. "This meadow is the best part of my hull farm."
+
+"Great country, this," broke in the Quarter-Master. "Why a kill-deer
+couldn't fly over it without carrying a knapsack. You don't think that
+camping upon this meadow will injure it any, do you?"
+
+"Right smart it will, I reckon," rejoined the man, his eyes kindling
+somewhat, "right smart, it will. $1500 at least."
+
+"What! What did the land cost you?"
+
+"Wall, I paid at the rate of $15 the acre for 118 acres, and the
+buildings and 12 acres on it are in this meadow, and the best bit of it,
+too."
+
+"Then you want to make us pay nearly what the whole farm cost you for
+using the meadow a single night?"
+
+"Wall, I reckon as how the rails will all be gone, and the sod all cut
+up, and----"
+
+"Well, I reckon," interrupted the Quarter-Master, "that you ought to
+prove your loyalty before you talk about claiming damages from Uncle
+Sam."
+
+"Oh! I'm on nary side, on nary side;" and he looked half suspiciously
+about the crowd, now somewhat increased. "I'm too old; besides, my left
+knee is crippled up bad," limping as he said so, to sustain his
+assertion.
+
+"Where are your children?"
+
+"My two boys and son-in-law are off with the South, but I'm not
+'countable for them."
+
+"Well, sir, you'll have to prove your loyalty before you get a receipt
+from me for any amount."
+
+"Prove my loyalty?" he muttered, at the same time looking blank. "What
+sort of swearin' have you for that?"
+
+"Don't swear him at all, at all," broke in the little Irish Corporal.
+"Swearing is no substitute for swinging. Faith! he's up to that
+business. It's mate and drink to him. Make him whistle Yankee Doodle or
+sing Hail Columbia. Be jabers, it is not in his looks to do it without
+choking."
+
+Terence's suggestion met with a general laugh of approval. The old
+fellow, finding himself in a crowd slow to appreciate his claim for
+damages when his loyalty was at a discount, made off towards his house,
+a dingy, two-story frame near by, reminded by the Colonel as he left
+that he would be expected to keep closely within doors while the troops
+were in that vicinity.
+
+This sovereign of the soil was a fair specimen of the landed gentry of
+Virginia. "On nary side," as he expressed it, when the Federal troops
+were in his neighborhood, and yet malignant and dastardly enough to
+maltreat any sick or wounded Union soldier that chance might throw into
+his hands. The less reserved tongues of his daughters told plainly
+enough where the family stood on the great question of the day. But
+while they recounted to some of the junior officers who were always on
+the alert in making female acquaintances, their long lists of famous
+relatives, they had all the eagerness of the Yankee, so much despised in
+the Richmond prints, in disposing of half-starved chickens and heavy
+hoe-cakes at extortionate prices. With their dickering propensities
+there was an amount of dirt on their persons and about the premises, and
+roughness in their manners, that did great discredit to the memory of
+Pocahontas.
+
+"You have the old horse tied up close," casually remarked a spruce young
+Sergeant who, in obedience to orders from Division Head-quarters, had
+just stationed a guard in the yard of the premises, alluding to an old,
+worn-out specimen of horseflesh tied up so closely to the house that his
+head and neck were almost a straight line.
+
+"Yon's no hoss, sir. It's a mare," quickly retorted one of those
+black-eyed beauties.
+
+The polite Sergeant, who had dressed himself with more than usual care,
+in the expectation of meeting the ladies, colored somewhat, but the
+young lady, in a matter-of-course strain, went on to say,
+
+"She's the only one left us, too. Preston and Moncure took the rest with
+them, and they say they've nearly used 'em up chasing you Yanks."
+
+Her unlady-like demeanor and exulting allusion to the Rebel cavalry
+tested to the utmost the Sergeant's qualities as a gentleman. A dicker
+for a pair of chickens, accomplished by his substituting a little ground
+coffee for a great sum in greenbacks, soon brought about a better
+understanding, however, on the part of the damsel.
+
+A few hours later saw the Adjutant and our poetical Lieutenant snugly
+seated on split-bottomed chairs in a dirty kitchen. Random conversation,
+in which the women let slip no opportunity of reminding their visitors
+of the soldierly qualities of the Rebels, interrupted by the occasional
+bleating of sheep and bawling of calves in the cellar, made the
+evening's entertainment novel and interesting. So much so that at a late
+hour the Lieutenant, who had invested closely the younger of the two,
+said, half sighing, as he gave her a fond look,
+
+          "With thee conversing, I forget all time,
+          All----"
+
+"Wall, I reckon I don't," broke in the matter-of-fact young lady. "Sal,
+just kick yon door around." As Sal did her bidding, and the full moon on
+the face of an old fashioned corner clock was disclosed, she continued,
+"It's just ten minutes after eleven, and you Yanks had better be off."
+
+Although the Adjutant was
+
+          "Like steel amid the din of arms;
+          Like wax when with the fair,"
+
+this lack of appreciation of poetic sentiment so abruptly shown, brought
+him out in a roar, and completely disconcerted the Lieutenant. They both
+retired speedily, and long after, the circumstance was one of the
+standing jokes of the camp.
+
+One of the most prominent and eagerly wished-for occurrences in camp, is
+the arrival of the mail. The well filled bag, looking much like one of
+the bags of documents forwarded by Congressmen for private purposes at
+Uncle Sam's expense, was emptied out on the sod that evening in front of
+the Colonel's marquee, and bundles containing boots, tobacco, bread,
+clothing of all kinds, eatables, and what-not,--for at that time Uncle
+Sam's army mails did a heavy express business,--were eyed curiously, by
+the crowd impatient for distribution. Most singular of all in shape and
+feeling was a package, heavily postmarked, and addressed to the Colonel.
+It contained what was a God-send to the larder of the mess,--a quarter
+of fine tender meat. But what kind of animal, was the query. The Major,
+who was a Nimrod in his own locality, after the most thorough
+inspection, and the discovery of a short straight hair upon it,
+pronounced it venison, or young kid, and confirmed the Colonel in the
+belief that he had been remembered by one of his Western friends. But
+deer or dog was a matter of indifference to hungry campaigners. A hearty
+meal was made of it, and speculation continued until the Brigadier, who
+had perpetrated the joke upon the Colonel, saw fit, long after, to
+reveal that it was mutton that had been taken from some marauders during
+the day's march.
+
+During the first and second days of the march, cannonading had been
+heard at intervals on the right flank. This day, however, the silence
+was ominous; and now at its close, with our army in close proximity to
+Fredericksburg, it indicated peaceable, unopposed possession, or delay
+of our own forces. But of the delay and its cause, provoking as it was,
+and costly as it has proved, enough has probably been written. An
+Investigating Committee has given the public full records. If we do not
+learn that delinquents have been punished, let us hope that the warning
+has been sufficient to avoid like difficulties in the future.
+
+Our army quietly turned into camp among the wooded heights of Stafford,
+opposite the town of Fredericksburg. The Rebels as quietly collected
+their forces and encamped on the heights upon the opposite side of the
+river. Day by day we could see them busily at work upon their
+fortifications. Each morning fresh mounds of earth appeared at different
+points in the semi-circular range of hills bounding Fredericksburg upon
+the South and West. This valuable time was made use of by the pontoon
+train at the rate of four miles per day.
+
+The three Grand Divisions, now that their stately march by the flank was
+over, had settled comfortably down among the hills of Stafford. Wood and
+water, essentials for camp comfort, were to be found in abundance. While
+the little parleying between the Commander of the Right Grand Division
+and the civil authorities of Fredericksburg continued, matters were
+somewhat in suspense. But a gradual quiet crept over the army, and in a
+few short weeks that heavily timbered country was one vast field of
+stumps, with here and there clusters of pine trees left standing for the
+comfort of different Head-quarters. As the timber disappeared, the tents
+and huts of the army before concealed in the forests were disclosed, and
+the whole country in the vicinity of the railroad was a continuous camp.
+The few open fields or barrens afforded fine review and drill grounds,
+and the toils of the march were scarcely over before in all directions
+could be heard the steady tramp of solid columns engaged in the
+evolutions of the field.
+
+Those who think that duties are light in camp, know nothing of the
+legions of reports, statements in duplicate and triplicate, required by
+the too often senseless formalities of red tape. These duties vary
+greatly in different divisions. With a place-man, mechanical in his
+movements, and withal not disposed to lighten labor, they multiply to a
+surprising extent, and subs intrusted with their execution often find
+that the most laborious part of the service is drudgery at the desk.
+Night after night would repose at Regimental Head-quarters be
+interrupted by repetitious and in many cases inconsistent orders, the
+only purpose of which appeared to be, to remind drowsy Adjutants and
+swearing Sergeant-Majors that the Commanding General of Division still
+ruled at Division Head-quarters, and that he was most alive between the
+hours of nine and twelve at night. Independently of the fact that in
+most cases in ordinary camp-life there was no reason why these orders
+should not have issued in business hours, their multiplicity was a
+nuisance. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but in all conscience
+when the pen has been through necessity ignored, and the sword is
+uplifted for rapid and earnest blows, and the heart of a nation hangs in
+heavy suspense upon its movements, these travelling Bureaux had better
+be abolished. Superadded to all this, was the labor resulting from the
+mania for Court-Martialing that raged at Division Head-quarters.
+Mechanical in its movements, not unfrequently malignant in its designs,
+officer after officer, earnest in purpose, but in some instances perhaps
+deficient in detail, had been sacrificed to an absolutism that could
+order the charges, detail the Court, play the part of principal witness
+for the prosecution, and confirm the proceedings.
+
+"Our volunteer force will never amount to much, until we attain the
+exact discipline of the French service," was the frequent remark of a
+General of Division. Probably not. But how much would its efficiency be
+increased, had the policy of the great Napoleon, from whose genius the
+French arms derive their lustre, prevailed, in detailing for desk duty
+in quiet departments the mechanical minds of paper Generals. His master
+tact in assigning to commanders legitimate spheres of work, and with it
+the untiring zeal of a Cromwell that would run like a purifying fire
+through the army, imparting to it its own impetuosity, and ridding it of
+jealousy and disaffection, were greatly needed in this Grand Army of the
+Potomac. Nobler men never stood in ranks! Holier banners never flaunted
+in the sunlight of Heaven! God grant its directing minds corresponding
+energy and wisdom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+_Red Tape and the Soldier's Widow--Pigeon-holing at Head-Quarters and
+Weeping at the Family Fireside--A Pigeon-hole General Outwitted--Fishing
+for a Discharge--The Little Irish Corporal on Topographical
+Engineers--Guard Duty over a Whiskey Barrel._
+
+
+                                    ----, Penna., Nov.--, 1862.
+
+     MY DEAR GEORGE:--This is the first spare time that I have been able
+     to get during the last week for a letter to my dear husband. And
+     now that there is quiet in the house, and our dear little boys are
+     sound asleep, and the covers nicely tucked about them in their
+     little trundle, I feel that I can scarcely write. There is such a
+     heaviness upon my heart. When I saw the crowd at the telegraph
+     office this morning while on my way to church, and heard that they
+     were expecting news of a great battle on the Rappahannock, such a
+     feeling of helplessness, sinking of the heart, and dizziness came
+     over me, that I almost fell upon the pavement. The great battle
+     that all expect so eagerly, may mean our dear little children
+     fatherless and myself a widow. Oh, George, I feel so sad and
+     lonely, and then every footstep I hear at the door I am afraid some
+     one is coming with bad news. Your last letter, too, I do not like.
+     I am afraid that more is the matter with you than you are willing
+     to admit. You promised me, too, that you would apply for a
+     furlough. Lieut. H---- has been twice at home since he went out.
+     You know he is in Sickles' Division.
+
+     Our precious little boys keep asking continually when papa will
+     come home. Little Georgie says he is a "du-du," you know that is
+     what he calls a soldier, and he gets the old sword you had in the
+     three months' service, and struts up and down at a great rate. They
+     can both say the Lord's prayer now, and every night when they get
+     through with it, they ask God to bless papa and mamma, and all the
+     Union "du-dus." I do wish that you could see them in their little
+     "Gadibaldis," as Harry calls them. When I see Mr. B----and others
+     take their evening walks with their children, just as you used to
+     do with Georgie, it takes all the grace and all the patriotism I
+     can muster to keep from murmuring.
+
+     Mr. G---- says that we need not trouble about the rent this
+     quarter, that he will wait until you are paid. The neighbors, too,
+     are very kind to me, and I have been kept so busy with work from
+     the shops, that I have made enough to pay all our little expenses.
+     But for all, George, I cannot help wishing every minute of the day
+     that "this cruel war was over" and you safe back. At a little
+     sewing party that we had the other day, Em D---- sang that old song
+     "When wild war's deadly blast was blown," that you used to read to
+     me so often, and when I heard of "sweet babes being fatherless,"
+     and "widows mourning," I burst into tears. I do not know why it is,
+     but I feel as if expecting bad news continually. Our little boys
+     say "don't cry, mamma," in such a way when I put them to bed at
+     night, and tell them that I kiss them for you too, that it makes me
+     feel all the worse. I know it is wrong. I know our Heavenly Father
+     knows what is best for us. I hope by this time you have learned to
+     put your trust in him. That is the best preparation for the
+     battle-field.
+
+     Do not fail to come home if you can. God bless you, George, and
+     protect you, is the prayer of
+
+                                   Your loving wife,
+                                               MARY.
+
+On a low cot in the corner of a hospital tent, near Potomac Creek,
+propped up by some extra blankets kindly loaned him by his comrades,
+toward the close of a December afternoon, lay a slightly-built, rather
+handsome man of about thirty, holding with trembling hand the above
+letter, and hurriedly gathering its contents with an eager but unsteady
+eye. The Surgeon noticing the growing flush upon his already fevered
+cheek, suggested that he had better have the letter read to him. So
+intent was the reader, that the suggestion was twice repeated before
+heeded, and then only drew the remark "Mary and the boys." A sudden fit
+of coughing that appeared to tear the very life strings came upon him,
+and at its close he fell back exhausted upon his pillow.
+
+"What luck, Adjutant?" inquired the Surgeon in a low tone, as he went
+forward, cautiously treading among the sick, to admit that officer into
+the tent.
+
+The Adjutant with a shake of the head remarked that the application had
+gone up two weeks previously from Brigade Head-quarters, and that
+nothing had been heard of it since. "As usual," he added, "pigeon-holed
+at Division Head-quarters."
+
+"Poor Wilson has been inquiring about it all day, and I very much fear
+that should it come now, it will be too late. He has failed rapidly
+to-day."
+
+"So bad as that? I will send up to Division Head-quarters immediately."
+
+The Lieutenant, a week previously, had been brought into the hospital
+suffering from a heavy cold and fever in connexion with it. For some
+weeks he had been in delicate health; so much so, in fact, that the
+Surgeon had urged him to apply for a furlough, and had stated in his
+certificate to the same, that it was absolutely necessary for the
+preservation of his life. As the Surgeon stated, a furlough, that might
+then have been beneficial, promised now to be of little avail. The
+disease had assumed the form of congestion of the lungs, and the
+Lieutenant seemed rapidly sinking.
+
+When the Adjutant left the hospital tent he sought out a Captain, an
+intimate acquaintance of the Lieutenant's, and charged him with a
+special inquiry at Head-quarters, as to the success of the application
+for a furlough. Thither the Captain repaired, through the well trodden
+mud and slush of the camp ground. The party of young officers within the
+tent of the Adjutant-General appeared to be in a high state of
+enjoyment, and that functionary himself retained just presence of mind
+sufficient to assure the Captain, after hearing his statement and urgent
+inquiry--"that there was no time now to look--that there were so d--n
+many papers he could not keep the run of them. These things must take
+their regular course, Captain,--regular course, you know. That's the
+difficulty with the volunteer officers," continued he, turning half to
+the crowd, "to understand regular military channels,--channels." As he
+continued stammering and stuttering, the crowd inside suspended the pipe
+to ejaculate assent, while the Captain, understanding red-tape to his
+sorrow, and too much disgusted to make further effort to understand the
+Captain, retraced his steps. Finding the Adjutant he told him of his
+lack of success, and together they repaired to the hospital tent to
+break the unwelcome news.
+
+At the time of his entry into the Hospital the Lieutenant was impressed
+with the belief that the illness would be his last, and he daily grew
+more solicitous as to the success of his application for a furlough.
+Another coughing fit had, during their absence, intervened, and as the
+two cautiously untied the flaps and entered the stifling atmosphere of
+the crowded tent, the Surgeon and a friend or two were bending anxiously
+about the cot. Their entry attracted the attention of the dying
+Lieutenant; for that condition his faint hurried breathing, interrupted
+by occasional gasps, and the rolling, fast glazing eye, too plainly
+denoted. A look of anxious inquiry,--a faint shake of the head from the
+Captain--for strong-voiced as he was, his tongue refused the duty of
+informing the dying man of what had become daily, unwelcome news.
+
+"Oh, my God! must I,--must I die without again seeing Mary and the
+babies!" with clasped hands he gasped, half rising, and casting at the
+same time an imploring look at the Surgeon.
+
+But the effort was too much. His head fell back upon the blankets. A
+gurgling sound was heard in his throat. With bowed heads to catch the
+latest whisper, his friends raised him up; and muttering indistinctly
+amid his efforts to hold the rapidly failing breath, "Mary and the
+babies. The babies,--Ma----" the Lieutenant left the Grand Army of the
+Potomac on an everlasting furlough.
+
+Mary was busily engaged with the duties of her little household a week
+later, enjoying, as best she might, the lively prattle of the boys, when
+there was the noise of a wagon at the door, and closely following it a
+knock. "Papa! papa!" exclaimed the children, as with eager haste they
+preceded the mother. With scarcely less eagerness, Mary opened the door.
+Merciful God! "Temper the wind to the shorn lambs." Earthly consolation
+is of little avail at a time like this. It was "Papa;"--but Mary was a
+widow, and the babies fatherless.
+
+By some unfortunate accident the telegram had been delayed, and the
+sight of the black pine coffin was Mary's first intimation of her loss.
+Her worst anticipations thus roughly realized, she sank at the door, a
+worthy subject for the kind offices of her neighbors.
+
+A fortnight passed, and the Adjutant was disturbed in his slumbers,
+almost at the solemn hour of midnight, to receive from an Orderly some
+papers from Division Head-Quarters. Among them, was the application of
+the Lieutenant, returned "approved."
+
+Measured by poor Mary's loss, how insignificant the sigh of the monied
+man over increased taxes! how beggarly the boast of patriotic
+investments! how contemptibly cruel, in her by no means unusual case,
+the workings of Red Tape!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Occurrences such as these, may sadden for the moment the soldier, but
+they produce no lasting depression.
+
+          "Don't you think I had oughter
+          Be a going down to Washington
+          To fight for Abraham's Daughter?"
+
+sang our ex-news-boy Birdy, on one of those cold damp evenings in early
+December, when the smoke of the fires hung like a pall over the camp
+ground, and the eyes suffered terribly if their owner made any attempt
+at standing erect.
+
+"And who is Abraham's Daughter?" queried one of a prostrate group around
+a camp fire.
+
+"Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," continued Birdy, to another popular
+air, until he was joined by a manly swell of voices in the closing
+line--
+
+          "Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue!"
+
+"Not much life here," continued Birdy, seating himself. "I have just
+left the 2--th. There is a high old time over there. They have got the
+dead wood on old Pigey nice."
+
+"In what way?" inquired the crowd.
+
+"You know that long, slim fellow of Co. E, in that Regiment, who is
+always lounging about the Hospital, and never on duty."
+
+"What! The fellow that has been going along nearly double, with both
+hands over the pit of his stomach, for a week past?"
+
+"The same," resumed Birdy. "He has been going it on diarrhoea lately;
+before that he was running on rheumatism. Well, you know he has been
+figuring for a discharge ever since he heard the cannonading at the
+second Bull Run, but couldn't make it before yesterday."
+
+"How did he make it?" inquired several, earnestly.
+
+"Fished for it," quietly remarked Birdy.
+
+"Come, Birdy, this is too old a crowd for any jokes of yours. Whose
+canteen have you been sucking Commissary out of?" broke in one of his
+hearers.
+
+"Nary time; I'm honest, fellows. He fished for it, and I'll tell you
+how," resumed Birdy, adjusting the rubber blanket upon which he had
+seated himself.
+
+"You see old Pigey was riding along the path that winds around the hill
+to Corps Head-Quarters, when he spied this fellow, Long Tom, as they
+call him, sitting on a stump, and alongside of the big sink, that some
+of our mess helped to dig when on police duty last. Tom held in both
+hands a long pole, over the sink, with a twine string hanging from
+it--for all the world as if he was fishing. On came old Pigey; but Tom
+never budged.
+
+"'What are you doing there, sir?' said the General.
+
+"'Fishing,' said Tom, without turning his head.
+
+"'Fishing! h--l and d--n! Must be crazy; no fish there.'
+
+"'I've caught them in smaller streams than this,' drawled out Tom,
+turning at the same time his eyes upon the General, with a vacant stare.
+'But then I had better bait. The ground about here is too mean for good
+red worms. Just look,' and Tom lifted up an old sardine box, half full
+of grubs, for the General to look at.
+
+"'Crazy, by G--d, sir,' said the General, turning to his Aid, 'Demented!
+Demented! Might be a dangerous man in camp; must be attended to,'
+continued the General; striking, as he spoke, vigorous blows across his
+saddle-bow, with his gauntlet; Tom all the while waiting for a bite,
+with the patience of an old fisherman.
+
+"It was after three in the afternoon, and the General took the bait.
+
+"'Must be attended to. Dangerous man! dangerous man!' said he, adjusting
+his spectacles.
+
+"'Your name and Regiment, sir?'
+
+"Tom drawled them out, and the General directed his Aid to take them
+down.
+
+"'Go to your Quarters, sir,' said the General.
+
+"'Havn't caught anything yet, and hard tack is played out,' replied Tom.
+
+"At this the General put spurs to his horse, and left. Half an hour
+afterward, a Corporal's Guard came after Tom. They took him up to the
+marquee of the Surgeon of the Division. Tom played it just as well
+there, and yesterday his discharge came down, all O.K., and they've got
+the Commissary on the strength of it, and are having a high old time
+generally."
+
+"Bully boy with a glass eye! How are _you_, discharge!" and like slang
+exclamations broke rapidly and rapturously from the crowd.
+
+"But," said one of the more thoughtful of the crowd, as the condition of
+a brother then lying hopelessly ill, with no prospect of a
+discharge,--although it had been promised repeatedly for months
+past,--pressed itself upon his attention, "how shameful that this
+able-bodied coward and idler should get off in this way, when so many
+better men are dying by inches in the hospitals. A General who
+understood his command and had more knowledge of human nature, could not
+be deceived in that way."
+
+"Tom had lounged about Divisions Head-Quarters so much, that he knew old
+Pigey thoroughly, and just when to take him," said a comrade.
+
+"All the greater shame that our Generals can be taken off their guard at
+any time," retorted the other.
+
+"Oh, well," continued he, "about what might be expected of one educated
+exclusively as a Topographical Engineer, and having no acquaintance with
+active field service, and with no talent for command; for it is a talent
+that West Point may educate, but cannot create."
+
+"And what is a Tippo, Typo, or Toppographical Engineer, Sergeant?" broke
+in the little Irish Corporal, who chanced to be one of the group, rather
+seriously. "Isn't it something like a land surveyor; and be Jabers,
+wasn't the great Washington himself a land surveyor? Eh? Maybe that's
+the rayson these Tippos, Typos, or Toppographical Engineers ride such
+high horses."
+
+"Not badly thought of, Corporal," replied the Sergeant, amid laughter at
+Terence's discovery, and his attempt at pronunciation; "but Washington
+was a man of earnestness and ability, and not a guzzler of whiskey, and
+a mouther of indecent profanity. There are good officers in that Corps.
+There is Meade, the fighter of the noble Pennsylvania Reserves; Warren,
+a gentleman as well as a soldier. Others might be named. Meritorious
+men, but kept in the background while the place-men, cumberers of the
+service, refused by Jeff. Davis when making his selections from among
+our regular officers, as too cheap an article, are kept in position at
+such enormous sacrifices of men, money, and time. I have heard it said,
+upon good authority, that there is a nest of these old place-men in
+Washington, who keep their heads above water in the service, through the
+studied intimacy of their families with families of Members of the
+Cabinet--a toadyism that often elevates them to the depression of more
+meritorious men, and always at the expense of the country,--but--
+
+          'Dark shall be light.'
+
+Keep up your spirits, boys."
+
+"Keep up your spirits," echoed Birdy; "that is what they are doing all
+the time at Division Head-Quarters,--by pouring spirits down, Jim,"
+continued he, turning suddenly to a comrade, who lounged lazily
+alongside of him, holding, at the same time at the end of a stick, a tin
+cup with a wire handle, over the fire, "tell the crowd about that
+whisky barrel."
+
+Some of the crowd had heard the story, from the manner in which they
+welcomed the suggestion, and insisted upon its reproduction.
+
+"Can't, till I cook my coffee," retorted Jim, pointing to the black,
+greasy liquid in the cup, simmering slowly over the half-smothered fire.
+Jim's cup had evidently been upon duty but a short time previously as a
+soup-kettle. "But it is about done," said he, lifting it carefully off,
+"and I might as well tell it while it cools."
+
+"About one week ago I happened to be detailed as a Head-Quarter guard,
+and about four o'clock in the afternoon was pacing up and down the beat
+in front of the General's Head-Quarters. It was a pleasant sun-shiny
+spring day,--when gadflies like to try their wings, and the ground seems
+to smoke in all directions,--and the General sat back composedly in the
+corner of his tent on a camp stool, with his elbow on his knee and his
+head hanging rather heavily upon his hand. The flaps were tied aside to
+the fly-ropes. I had a fair view of him as I walked up and down, and I
+came to the conclusion from his looks that Pigey had either a good load
+on, or was in a brown study. While I was thinking about it up comes a
+fellow of the 2--th, that I used to meet often while we were upon
+picket. He is usually trim, tidy-looking, and is an intelligent fellow,
+but on that day everything about him appeared out of gear. His old grey
+slouch hat had only half a rim, and that hung over his eyes--hair
+uncombed, face unwashed, hands looking as if he had been scratching
+gravel with them, his blouse dirty and stuffed out above the belt,
+making him as full-breasted as a Hottentot woman, pantaloons greasy,
+torn, and unevenly suspended; and to foot up his appearance shoes
+innocent of blacking, and out at the toes. When I saw him, I laughed
+outright. He winked, and asked in an undertone if the General was in,
+stating at the same time that he was there in obedience to an order
+detailing one man for special duty at the General's Head Quarters, 'and
+you know,' said he, 'that the order always is for intelligent
+soldierly-looking men. Well, all our men that have been sent up of that
+stripe have been detained as orderlies, to keep his darkies in wood and
+water, and hold his horses, and we are getting tired of it. _I_ don't
+intend running any risk.'
+
+"'Don't think you will,' said I, laughing at his make-up.
+
+"Just then I noticed a movement of the General's head, and resumed the
+step. A moment after, the General's eye caught sight of the Detail. He
+eyed him a moment in a doubtful way, and then rubbing his eyes, as if to
+confirm the sight, and straightening up, shouted--
+
+"'Sergeant of the guard! Sergeant of the guard!'
+
+"The sergeant was forthcoming at something more than a double-quick; and
+with a salute, and 'Here, sir,' stood before the General.
+
+"Old Pigey's right hand extended slowly, pointing towards the Detail,
+who stood with his piece at a rest, wondering what was to come next.
+
+"'Take away that musket, sergeant! and that G--d d--n looking thing
+alongside of it. What is it, anyhow?' said the General, with a
+significant emphasis on the word 'thing.'
+
+"And off the sergeant went, followed by the man, who gave a sly look as
+he left."
+
+"Pretty well played," said one of the crowd; "but what has that to do
+with a whisky barrel?"
+
+"Hold on, and you will see; I am not through yet.
+
+"About half an hour afterward another man from the same regiment
+presented himself, and asked permission to cross my beat, saying that he
+had been detailed on special duty, and was to report to the General in
+person. This one looked trim enough to pass muster. He presented himself
+at the door of the tent and saluted; but the General had taken two or
+three plugs in the interim, and was slightly oblivious. Anxious to see
+some sport, I suggested that he should call the General.
+
+"'General,' said he, lowly, then louder, all the while saluting, until
+the General awoke with a start.
+
+"'Who the h--l are you, sir?'
+
+"'I was ordered to report to you in person, sir, for special duty.'
+
+"'Special duty, sir! Has it come to this? Must I assign the duty to be
+performed by each individual man, sir, in the Division, sir!'
+
+"The disheveled hair, flashing eyes, and fierce look of the General,
+startled this new Detail, and he commenced explaining. The General broke
+in abruptly, however, as if suddenly recollecting; and rubbing his
+hands, while his countenance assumed a bland smile:
+
+"'Oh, yes; you are right, sir, right; special duty, sir; yes, sir;
+follow me, sir.'
+
+"And the General arose and with somewhat uncertain strides left his
+marquee, and, followed by the man, entered a Sibley partly in its rear.
+
+"'There, sir,' said the General, pointing, with rather a pleased
+countenance; 'do you see that barrel, sir?'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' replied the Detail, saluting.
+
+"'That barrel holds whisky, sir--whisky;'--rising upon his toes and
+emphasizing the word; 'and I want you to guard it G--d d----d well.
+Don't let a d--n man have a drop, sir. Do you understand, sir?'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' rejoined the Detail, saluting, and commencing his beat
+around the barrel.
+
+"The General was about leaving the Sibley, when he turned suddenly;
+
+"'Do you drink, sir?'
+
+"'Once and a while, sir,' replied the Detail, saluting.
+
+"'Have you had any lately?'
+
+"'No, sir.'
+
+"'By G--d, sir, I'll give you some, sir;' and he strides into his
+marquee and returns with a tin cup full of liquor, which he placed upon
+the barrel, and told the man to help himself. After the General had
+gone, the Detail did help himself, until his musket lay on one side of
+the Sibley and himself on the other."
+
+"The General knows how to sympathize with a big dry," said one, as the
+crowd laughed over the story.
+
+Pen cannot do justice to the stories abounding in wit and humor
+wherewith soldiers relieve the tedium of the camp. To an old campaigner,
+their appearance in print must seem like a faded photograph, in the
+sight of one who has seen the living original. Characters sparkling with
+humor, such as was never attributed to any storied Joe Miller, abound in
+every camp. The brave Wolfe, previously to the victory which cost him
+his life, is reported to have sung, while floating down the St.
+Lawrence:
+
+          "Why, soldiers, why,
+          Should we be melancholy,
+          Whose business 'tis to die?"
+
+Whether induced in his case by an effort to bolster up the courage of
+his comrades or not, the sentiment has at all times been largely
+practised upon in the army of the Potomac.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+_The Battle of Fredericksburg--Screwing Courage up to the Sticking
+Point--Consolations of a Flask--Pigeon-hole Nervousness--Abandonment of
+Knapsacks--Incidents before, during, and after the Fight._
+
+
+In this wintry weather, striking tents meant stripping the log huts of
+the bits of canvas that ordinarily served as the shelter-tents of the
+soldiers. The long rows of huts thus dismantled,--soldiers at rest in
+ranks, with full knapsacks and haversacks,--groups of horses saddled and
+bridled, ready for the rider,--on one of these clear, cold December
+mornings, indicated that the army was again upon the move. Civilians had
+been sent back freighted with letters from those soon to see the serious
+struggle of the field; the sick had been gathered to hospitals nearer
+home; the musicians had reported to the surgeons, and the men were left,
+to the sharp notes of sixty rounds of ball cartridge carried in their
+boxes and knapsacks,--in the plight of the Massachusetts regiment that
+marched through the mobs of Baltimore, to the music of the
+cartridge-box, in the first April of the Rebellion.
+
+The time intervening between the removal of McClellan and the battle of
+Fredericksburg, was a period of uneasy suspense to the nation at large
+and its representatives in the field. Dear as the devoted patriotism,
+the earnest conduct of the Rhode Island Colonel--the hero of the
+Carolinas and now the leader of the Grand Army of the Potomac--were to
+the patriotic masses of the nation, the fact of his being an untried
+man, gave room for gloom and foreboding. With the army at large, the
+suspense was accompanied by no lack of confidence. The devotion of the
+Ninth Army Corps for its old commander appeared to have spread
+throughout the army; and his open, manly countenance, bald head, and
+unmistakable whiskers, were always greeted with rounds for "Burny." The
+jealousy of a few ambitious wearers of stars may have been ill concealed
+upon that morning, only to be disclosed shortly to his detriment; but
+the earnest citizen-soldiery were eager, under his guidance, to do
+battle for their country. Time has shown, how much of the misfortune of
+the subsequent week was attributable to imperfect weeding of
+McClellanism at Warrenton.
+
+Like a lion at bay, restless in easy view of the hosts of the
+Rebellious, the army had remained in its camp upon the heights of
+Stafford until the arrival of the pontoons. For miles along the
+Rappahannock, the picket of blue had his counterpart in the picket of
+grey upon the opposite shore. Unremitting labor upon fortifications and
+earthworks, had greatly increased the natural strength of the
+amphitheatre of hills in the rear of Fredericksburg. Countless surmises
+spread in the ranks as to the character and direction of the attack;
+though the whims of those who uttered them were variant as the
+reflections of a kaleidoscope. But the sun, that through the pines that
+morning, shone upon burnished barrels, polished breast-plates, and
+countenances of brave men, radiant, as if reflecting their holy
+purpose, has never, since the shining hosts of Heaven were marshalled
+for the suppression of the great prototype of this Rebellion, seen more
+earnest ranks, or a holier cause.
+
+The bugles call "Attention," then "Forward." Horses are rapidly mounted;
+and speedily coming to the shoulder, and facing to the right, the army
+is in motion by the flank towards the river. Far as the eye could see,
+in all directions, there were moving masses of troops. Cowardly beneath
+contempt is the craven, who in such a cause, and at such a time, would
+not feel inspirited by the firm tread of the martial columns.
+
+"Hear 'em! Oh, Hear 'em!" exclaimed an earnest-looking country boy,
+hastily closing a daguerreotype case, into which he had been intently
+gazing, and replacing it in his pocket, as the booming of a heavy siege
+gun upon the Washington Farm, followed instantly by the reports of
+several batteries to the right, broke upon the ear like volleyed
+thunder. A clap of thunder from a clear sky could not have startled him
+more, had he been at work upon his father's farm. His earnest simplicity
+afforded great amusement to his comrades, and for a while made him the
+butt of a New York Regiment that then chanced to be marching abreast.
+Raw recruit as he was, cowardice was no part of his nature, and he
+indignantly repelled the taunts of his comrades. Gloom deep settled was
+visible upon his countenance, however, although firm his step and
+compressed his lip.
+
+"Terence," said he, to the little Irish Corporal who marched by his
+side, as another suggestive artillery fire that appeared to move along
+the entire front, made itself heard, "may I ask a favor of you?"
+
+"Indade ye may, John, and a thousand ov them if ye plaze, to the last
+dhrop in my canteen."
+
+One of those jams so constant and annoying in the movements of large
+masses of men, here gave the opportunity for John to unbosom himself,
+which he did, while both leaned upon the muzzles of their pieces.
+
+"Terence, I do not believe that I will be alongside of you many days,"
+said John, with an effort.
+
+"Why, what's the matter wid ye, boy? if I didn't know ye iver since you
+thrashed that bully in the Zouaves, I wud think ye cowardly."
+
+"It is not fear, Corporal," continued John, more determinedly. "I'm
+looking the danger squarely in the face, and am ready to meet it, and I
+want to be prepared for it."
+
+"Be jabers, John," retorted Terence, "ye should have prepared for it
+before you left home. I saw Father Mahan just before I left, and he
+tould me to do my duty like a thrue Irishman; and that if I was kilt in
+such a cause I wud go straight through, and be hardly asked to stay over
+night in Purgatory. There's my poor brother, peace to his soul;--and did
+ye hear----"
+
+"But, Terence," interrupted John, "I am not afraid of death; and for the
+judgment after death I have made all the preparation I could in my poor
+way, and I can trust that to my Maker; but"----and here John clapped his
+hand over his left breast.
+
+"Oh, I see," said Terence. "It's a case of disease of the heart."
+
+"I want you, in case I fall, to take the daguerreotype that you will
+find in the inside pocket on the left side of my blouse, and a sealed
+letter, and see that both are sent to the address upon the letter,"
+continued John.
+
+"Faith, will I, John. But who tould you that you wud be kilt, and meself
+that's alone and friendless escape? Well, I'll take them, John, if I
+have to go meself; and it's Terence McCarty that will not see her
+suffer; and maybe--but it's hard seeing how a girl could take a fancy to
+a short curly-headed Irishman, like meself, after having loved a
+sthrapping, straight-haired man like you."
+
+How John relished the winding-up of the corporal's offer could not well
+be seen, as an order to resume the step interrupted the conversation.
+
+Progress was slow, necessarily, from the caution required in the
+approach to the river. Over the rolling ground, to an artillery
+accompaniment unequalled in grandeur, the troops trudged slowly along.
+Here and there was a countenance of serious determination, but the great
+mass were gay and reckless, as soldiers proverbially are, of the risks
+the future might hold in reserve.
+
+After a succession of short marches and halts, the forward movement
+appeared to cease about four o'clock in the afternoon, and the men
+quietly rested on their arms, as well as the damp, and in many places
+muddy ground would allow. Towards evening countless fires, fed by the
+dry bushes found in abundance upon the old fields of Virginia, showed
+that amidst war's alarms the men were not unmindful of coffee.
+
+Throughout the day, with but brief cessation, artillery firing had
+continued. The booming of the siege guns, mingled with the sharp rattle
+of the light, and the louder roar of the heavy batteries, all causing
+countless echoes among the neighboring hills, completed the carnival of
+sound.
+
+Night crept gradually on, the fires were extinguished, the cannonading
+slackened gradually, then ceased, and the vast army, save those whom
+duty kept awake, silently slept under frosted blankets.
+
+Cannonading was resumed at early dawn of the next day, and the slow
+progress of the troops towards the river continued. Before night our
+advance had crossed upon the pontoon bridges, notwithstanding a galling
+fire of the Rebel sharpshooters under cover of the buildings along the
+river, and was firmly established in the town. Late in the day our
+Division turned into a grove of young pines, a short distance in the
+rear of the Phillips House. Upon beds of the dead foliage, soft as
+carpets of velvet, after the fatigues of the day, slumber was sound.
+
+The reveille sounded at early morn of the next day,--Saturday, the
+memorable thirteenth of December,--by over three hundred pieces of
+artillery, again aroused the sleeping camps to arms, and in the grey
+fog, the groves and valleys for some miles along the river appeared
+alive with moving masses. As soon as the fog lifted sufficiently, a
+large balloon between us and the river arose, upon a tour of
+observation. It was a fine mark for a rifled battery of the Rebels, and
+some shells passed close to it, and exploded in dangerous proximity to
+our camp.
+
+Under an incessant artillery fire the main movement of the troops across
+the river commenced. Leaving our camp and passing to the right of the
+Phillips mansion, we found our Division, one of a number of columns
+moving in almost parallel lines to the river. On the western slope of
+the hill or ridge upon which the house stood, we came to another halt,
+until our turn to cross should come.
+
+Whatever modern armies may have lost in dazzling appearance, when
+contrasted with the armies of old that moved in glittering armor and
+under "banner, shield, and spear," they certainly have lost nothing in
+the enginery of death, and in the sights and sounds of the fight itself.
+A twelve-pound battery under stern old Cato's control, would have sent
+Caesar and his legions howling from the gates of Rome, and have saved the
+dignity of her Senate. The shock of battle was then a medley of human
+voices, confused with the rattle of the spear upon the shield; now a
+hell of thunder volumed from successive batteries,--and relieved by
+screaming and bursting shell and rattling musketry. The proper use of a
+single shell would have cleared the plains of Marathon. More
+appropriately can we come down to later times, when
+
+          "The old Continentals,
+          In their ragged regimentals,
+          Faltered not,"
+
+for the ground upon which our army stood had repeatedly been used as a
+rallying point for troops, and a depot for military stores in
+Continental and Revolutionary times. How great the contrast between the
+armies now upon either side of the Rappahannock, and the numbers, arms,
+and equipage then raised with difficulty from the country at large. Our
+forefathers in some measure foresaw our greatness; but they did not
+foresee the magnitude of the sin of slavery, tolerated by them against
+their better judgment, and now crowding these banks with immense and
+hostile armies. Since that day the country has grown, and with it as
+part of its growth, the iniquity, but the purposes of the God of battles
+prevail nevertheless. The explosion that rends the rock and releases the
+toad confined and dormant for centuries, may not have been intended for
+that end by the unwitting miner, nor the civil convulsion that shatters
+a mighty nation to relieve an oppressed people and bestow upon it the
+blessings of civilization, may not have been started with that view by
+foul conspirators.
+
+But while we are digressing, a cavalcade of mounted men have left the
+area in front of the Phillips mansion, and are approaching us upon the
+road at a full gallop. The boys recognize the foremost figure, clad in a
+black pilot frock, his head covered with a regulation felt, the brim of
+which is over his eyes and the top rounded to its utmost capacity, and
+cheer upon cheer for "Burney" run along the column. With a firm seat, as
+his horse clears the railroad track and dashes through the small stream
+near by, he directs his course to the Lacy House on the bank of the
+river.
+
+It was near noon when we passed over the same ground, and taking a road
+to the right of the once tasteful grounds of that mansion, debouched by
+a narrow pass cut through the bank to the water's edge. As we did so,
+some shells thrown at the mounted officers of the Regiment passed close
+to their heads and exploded with a dull sound in the soft ground of the
+bank. With a steady tramp the troops crossed, scarcely the slightest
+motion being perceptible upon the firm double pontoon bridge. Another
+column was moving across upon the bridge below. Gaining the opposite
+bank, the column filed to the left, in what appeared to be a principal
+street of the town. Here knapsacks were unslung and piled in the store
+rooms upon either side.
+
+The few citizens who remained had sought protection from the shells in
+the cellars, and not an inhabitant of the place was to be seen.
+Notwithstanding the heavy concentrated artillery fire,--beyond some few
+buildings burned down,--nothing like the destruction was visible that
+would be imagined. Deserted by its proper inhabitants, the place had,
+however, a heavy population in the troops that crowded the streets
+parallel with the river. The day previous the Rebels had opened fire
+upon the town. It was continued at intervals, but with little effect.
+Z-i-i-s-s! a round shot sings above your head, and with a sharp thud
+strikes the second story of the brick house opposite, marking its
+passage by a tolerably neat hole through the wall. P-i-i-n-g! screams a
+shell, exploding in a room with noise sufficient to justify the total
+destruction of a block of buildings. The smoke clears away, ceilings may
+be torn, floors and windows shattered, but the building, to an outside
+observer, little damaged.
+
+From an early hour in the morning the musketry had been incessant,--now
+in volleys, and now of the sharp rattling nature that denotes severe
+skirmishing. On the left, where more open ground permitted extended
+offensive movements, the firing was particularly heavy. But above it all
+was the continuous roar of artillery, and the screaming and explosion of
+shells. To this music the troops in light order and ready for the fray,
+marched up a cross street, and in the shelter of the buildings of
+another street on the outer edge of the place and parallel with the
+river, stood at arms,--passing on their way out hundreds of wounded men
+of different regiments, on stretchers and on foot, some with ghastly
+wounds, and a few taking the advantage of the slightest scratch to pass
+from front to rear. Legs and arms carelessly heaped together alongside
+of one of the amputating tents in the rear of the Phillips House, and
+passed in the march of the day before, had prepared the nerves of the
+men somewhat for this most terrible ordeal for fresh troops. Many of the
+wounded men cheered lustily as the men marched by, and were loudly
+cheered in return, while here and there an occasional skulker would tell
+how his regiment was cut to pieces, and like Job's servant he alone
+left.
+
+From this point a fine view could be had of the encircling hills, with
+their crowning earthworks, commanding the narrow plateau in our
+immediate front. On the right and centre the Rebel line was not to be
+assailed, but by advancing over ground that could be swept by hundreds
+of pieces of artillery, while to protect an advancing column our
+batteries from their position must be powerless for good. A stone wall
+following somewhat the shape of the ridge ran along its base. Properly
+banked in its rear, it afforded an admirable protection for their
+troops. As there was no chance for success in storming these works, the
+object in making the attempt was doubtless to divert the Rebel attention
+from their right.
+
+Column after column of the flower of the army, had during the day
+charged successively in mad desperation upon that wall; but not to reach
+it. Living men could not stand before that heavy and direct musketry,
+and the deadly enfilading cannonade from batteries upon the right and
+left. The thickly strewn plain attested at once the heroic courage of
+the men, and the hopelessness of the contest.
+
+"Boys, we're in for it," said a Lieutenant on his way from the right.
+"Old Pigey has just had three staving swigs from his flask, and they are
+all getting ready. There goes 'Tommy Totten,'" as the bugle call for
+"forward" is familiarly called in the army.
+
+Our course was continued to the left--two regiments marching
+abreast--until we neared a main road leading westward from the town. In
+the meantime the movement had attracted the Rebel fire, and at the last
+cross street a poor fellow of the 2--th Regiment was almost cut in two
+by a shell which passed through the ranks of our Regiment and exploded
+upon the other side of the street, but without doing further damage. At
+the main road we filed to the right, and amid dashing Staff officers and
+orderlies, wounded men and fragments of regiments broken and
+disorganized, proceeded on our way to the front. There was a slight
+depression in the road, enough to save the troops, and shot and shell
+sang harmlessly above our heads. When the head of the column--really its
+rear--as we were left in front, was abreast of a swampy strip of meadow
+land, at the further end of which was a tannery, our Brigade filed again
+to the right. The occupation of this meadow appeared to be criminally
+purposeless, as our line of attack was upon the left of the road; while
+it was in full view and at the easy range of a few hundred yards from a
+three-gun Rebel battery. The men were ordered to lie down, which they
+did as best they could from the nature of the ground, while the mounted
+officers of the Division and Brigade gathered under the shelter of the
+brick tannery building.
+
+The movement was scarcely over, before one head and then another
+appeared peering through the embrasures of the earthwork, then a mounted
+officer upon a lively sorrel cantered as if for observation a short
+distance to the left of the work. Some sharpshooters in our front,
+protected slightly by the ground which rose gently towards the west,
+tried their breech-loaders upon him. At 450 yards there was certainty
+enough in the aim to make the music of their bullets unpleasant, and he
+again sought the cover of the work. An upright puff of smoke,--then a
+large volumed puff horizontally,--shrill music in its short flight,--a
+dull, heavy sound as the shell explodes in the soft earth under our
+ranks,--and one man thrown ten feet into the air, fell upon his back in
+the ranks behind him, while his two comrades on his left were killed
+outright, his Lieutenant near by mortally wounded, a leg of his comrade
+on the right cut in two, and a dozen in the neighborhood bespattered
+with the soft ground and severely contused. Shells that exploded in the
+air above us, or screamed over our heads; rifle balls that whizzed
+spitefully near, were now out of consideration. The motions of loading
+and firing, and as we were in the line of direction, the shell itself,
+could be seen with terrible distinctness. There was the dread certainty
+of death at every discharge. All eyes were turned toward the battery,
+and at each puff, the "bravest held his breath" until the smothered
+explosion announced that the danger was over. From our front ranks, who
+had gradually crept up the side of the hill, an incessant fire was kept
+up; but the pieces could be worked with but little exposure, and it was
+harmless. Fortunately the shells buried themselves deeply before
+exploding, and were mainly destructive in their direct passage. Again
+the horseman cantered gaily to his former place of observation on the
+left; but our sharpshooters had the range, and his fine sorrel was
+turned to the work limping very discreditably. This trifling injury was
+all that we could inflict in return for the large loss of life and limb.
+
+"Well, Lieutenant, poor John is gone!" said the little Irish Corporal,
+coming to the side of that officer.
+
+"What, killed?"
+
+"Ivery bit of it. I have just turned him over, and shure he is as dead
+as he was before he was born. That last shot murthered the boy. It is
+Terence McCarthy that will do his duty by him, and may be----"
+
+"Corporal! to your post," broke in the Lieutenant. "Old Pigey is taking
+another pull at the flask, and we will move in a minute."
+
+The surmise of the Lieutenant was correct. "Tommy Totten" again called
+the men to ranks, and right in front, the head of the column took the
+pike on another advance. The Rebels seeing the movement, handled their
+battery with great rapidity and dexterity, and shells in rapid
+succession were thrown into the closed ranks, but without creating
+confusion. Among others, a Major of the last Regiment upon the road, an
+old Mexican campaigner, and a most valuable officer, fell mortally
+wounded just as he was about leaving the field, and met the fate, that
+by one of those singular premonitions before noticed in this
+chapter,--so indicative by their frequency of a connexion in life
+between man's mortal and immortal part,--he had already anticipated.
+
+It was now about four o'clock in the afternoon. The day was somewhat
+misty, and at this time the field of battle was fast becoming shrouded
+by the commingled mist and smoke.
+
+On the left of the road the Brigade formed double line of battle along
+the base and side of a rather steep slope which led to the plateau
+above. The ground was muddy and well trodden, and littered with dead
+bodies in spots that marked the localities of exploded shells. Hungry
+and fatigued with the toil of the day, yet expectant of a conflict which
+must prove the death scene of many, the men sank upon their arms. From
+this same spot, successive lines of battle had charged during the day.
+Brave souls! With rushing memories of home and kindred and friends, they
+shrank not because the path of duty was one of danger.
+
+We were there as a forlorn hope for the final effort of the field. With
+great exertion and consummate skill upon the part of its Commander, a
+battery had been placed in position on the summit of the slope. Officers
+and men worked nobly, handling the pieces with coolness and rapidity.
+What they accomplished, could not be seen. What they suffered, was
+frightfully apparent. Man after man was shot away, until in some
+instances they were too weak-handed to keep the pieces from following
+their own recoil down the slope, confusing our ranks and bruising the
+men. Volunteers sprang forward to assist in working the guns. The
+gallant Commander, almost unaided, kept order in what would otherwise
+have been a mingled herd of confused men and frightened horses. No force
+could withstand the hurricane of hurtling shot and shell that swept the
+summit.
+
+"Lieutenant, take command of that gun," was the short, sharp, nervous
+utterance of a General of Division, as in one of his tours of random
+riding he suddenly stopped his horse in front of a boy of nineteen, a
+Lieutenant of infantry, who previously to bringing his squad of men into
+service, a few brief months before, had never seen a full battery.
+
+"Sir!" he replied, in unfeigned astonishment.
+
+"By G--d! sir, I command you as the Commanding General of this
+Division, sir, to take command of that piece of artillery."
+
+"General, I am entirely unacquainted with----"
+
+"Take command of that piece, sir. You should be ready to enter any arm
+of the service," replied the General, flourishing his sword in a
+threatening manner.
+
+"General, I will do my duty; but I can't sight a cannon, sir. I will
+hand cartridge, turn the screw, steady the wheel, or I'll ram----"
+
+"Ram--ram!"--echoed the General with an oath, and off he started on
+another of his mad rides.
+
+"Fall in," was passed rapidly along the line, and a moment after our
+Brigadier, cool as if exercising his command in the evolutions of a
+peaceful field, rode along the ranks.
+
+"Boys, you are ordered to take that stone wall, and must do it with the
+bayonet."
+
+Words full of deadly import to men who for long hours had been in full
+view of the impregnable works, and the field of blood in their front.
+Ominous as was the command, it was greeted with cheers; and with
+bayonets at a charge, up that difficult slope,--preserving their line as
+best they could while breaking to pass the guns, wounded and struggling
+horses, and bodies thickly strewn over that most perilous of positions
+for artillery,--the troops passed at a rapid step. The ground upon the
+summit had been laid out in small lots, as is customary in the suburbs
+of towns. Many of the partition fences were still remaining, with here
+and there gaps, or with upper rails lowered for the passage of troops.
+For a moment, while crossing these fallow fields, there was a lull in
+the direct musketry. The enfilading fire from batteries right and left
+still continued; the fierce fitful flashes of the bursting shells
+becoming more visible with the approach of night. Onward we went,
+picking our way among the fallen dead and wounded of Brigades who had
+preceded us in the fight, with feet fettered with mud, struggling to
+keep place in the line. Several regiments lying upon their arms were
+passed over in the charge.
+
+"Captain," said a mounted officer when we had just crossed a fence
+bounding what appeared to be an avenue of the town, "close up on the
+right." The Captain partly turned, to repeat the command to his men,
+when the bullets from a sudden flash of waving fire that for the instant
+lit up the summit of the stone wall for its entire length, prostrated
+him with a mortal wound, and dismounted his superior. Pity that his eye
+should close in what seemed to be the darkest hour of the cause dearest
+to his soul!
+
+Volley after volley of sheeted lead was poured into our ranks. We were
+in the proper position on the plain, and a day's full practice gave them
+exact range and terrible execution. In the increased darkness, the
+flashes of musketry alone were visible ahead, while to the right and
+left the gloom was lit up by the lurid flashing of their batteries. This
+very darkness, in concealing the danger, and the loss, doubtless did its
+share in permitting the men to cross the lines of dead that marked the
+halting-place of previous troops. Still onward they advanced,--the
+thunder of artillery above them,--the groans of the wounded rising from
+below;--frightful gaps are made in their ranks by exploding shells, and
+many a brave boy staggers and falls to rise no more, in that storm of
+spitefully whizzing lead.
+
+Regularity in ranks was simply impossible. Many officers and men
+gathered about a brick house on the right--a narrow lawn leading
+directly to the fatal wall was crowded; indeed, caps bearing the
+regimental numbers were found, as has since been ascertained, close by
+the wall, and a Lieutenant who was stunned in the fight and fell almost
+at its base, was taken prisoner. Nearly every officer who had entered
+the fight mounted, was at this time upon foot. In the tempest of bullets
+that everywhere prevailed the destruction of the force was but a
+question of brief time, and to prevent further heroic but vain
+sacrifices the order to retire was given. With the Brigade, the Regiment
+fell back, leaving one-third of its number in dead and wounded to hallow
+the remembrance of that fatal field.
+
+"This way, Pap! This is the way to get out safe," shouted a Captain as
+he rose, from the rear of a pile of rubbish, amid the laughter of the
+men now on their backward move. The burly form of the exhorting Colonel
+was seen to follow the no less burly form of the Captain, and father and
+son were spared for other fields.
+
+An effort was made to reform after the firing had slackened, but the
+increased darkness prevented the marshalling of the thinned ranks. Out
+of range of the still not infrequent bullets and occasional shell, and
+drowsy from fatigue, the men again lay upon their arms at the foot of
+the slope; and the battle of Fredericksburg was over.
+
+What happened upon the left, where the main battle should have been
+fought, and why Franklin was upon the left at all, are problems that
+perhaps the reader can pass upon to better advantage than the writer of
+these pages. His "corner of the fight" has been described, truthfully
+at least, whatever the other failings may be.
+
+We had left the field; but the Rebels had not as yet gained it. Pickets
+were thrown out to within eighty yards of their line, and details
+scattered over the field to bear off the wounded. No lights were
+allowed, and the least noise was sure to bring a shell or a shower of
+bullets. In consequence, their removal was attended with difficulty. The
+evil of the practice too prevalent among company commanders, of sending
+skulkers and worthless men in obedience to a detail for the ambulance
+corps, was now horribly apparent. Large numbers of the dead, and even
+the dying, were found with their pockets turned inside out, rifled of
+their contents by these harpies in uniform.
+
+But little rest was to be had that night. At 8 P. M. the troops were
+marched back into the town, only to be brought out again at midnight and
+re-formed in line of battle about a hundred yards distant from the wall.
+The moon had now risen, and in its misty light the upturned faces of the
+dead lost nothing of ghastliness. Horrible, too, beyond
+description--ringing in the ears of listeners for a lifetime--were the
+shrieks and groans of the wounded,--principally Rebel,--from a strip of
+neutral ground lying between the pickets of the two armies. Whatever the
+object of reforming line of battle may have been, it appears to have
+been abandoned, as after a short stay we were returned to the town and
+assigned quarters in the street in front of the Planters' House.
+
+Fredericksburg was a town of hospitals. All the churches and public
+buildings, very many private residences, and even the pavements in their
+respective fronts, were crowded with wounded. In one of the principal
+churches on a lower street, throned in a pulpit which served as a
+dispensary, and surrounded by surgical implements and appliances,
+flourished our little Dutch Doctor, never more completely in his
+element. Very nice operations, as he termed them, were abundant.
+
+"How long can I live?" inquired a fine-looking, florid-faced young man
+of two-and-twenty, with a shattered thigh, who had just been brought in
+and had learned from the Doctor that amputation could not save his life.
+
+"Shust fifteen minutes," was the reply, as the Doctor opened and closed
+his watch in a cold, business way.
+
+"Can I see a Chaplain?"
+
+"Shaplain! Shaplain! eh? Shust one tried to cross, and he fell tead on
+bridge. Not any follow him, I shure you. Too goot a chance to die, for
+Shaplains. What for you want him? Bray, eh?"
+
+The dying man, folding his hands upon his breast, nodded assent.
+
+"Ver well, I bray," and at the side of the stretcher the Doctor kneeled,
+and with fervid utterance, and in the solemn gutturals of the German,
+repeated the Lord's prayer. When he arose to resume his labor, the
+soldier was beyond the reach of earthly supplication; but a smile was
+upon his countenance.
+
+The Sabbath, with the main body of our troops, was a day of rest. Chance
+shots from Rebel sharpshooters, who had crept to within long range of
+the cross streets, were from time to time heard, and shell occasionally
+screamed over the town. To ears accustomed to the uproar of the
+preceding days, however, they were not in the least annoying. Over
+one-half of the army were comfortably housed, bringing into requisition
+for their convenience the belongings and surroundings of the abandoned
+dwellings. Notwithstanding our slow approach, the evidences of hasty
+exit on the part of the inhabitants were abundant on all sides.
+Warehouses filled with flour and tobacco were duly appreciated by the
+men, while parlors floored in Brussels, and elegantly ornamented, were
+in many instances wantonly destroyed.
+
+"Tom," said a non-commissioned officer, addressing a private whom we
+have before met in these pages, "where did you get that box?"
+
+"Get it? Why I confiscated it. Just look at the beauties," and opening a
+fine mahogany case, Tom disclosed a pair of highly finished duelling
+pistols.
+
+"What right have you to confiscate it?" retorted the Sergeant.
+
+"It is contraband of war, and Rebel property. Record evidence of that.
+Just look at this letter found with it," and Tom pulled out of an inside
+pocket of his blouse a letter written in a most miserable scrawl,
+assuring some "Dear Capting" of
+
+          "Here's my heart and here's my hand,
+          For the man who fit for Dixy land."
+
+Monday passed in much the same manner. About 9 P. M. of that day the
+Regiment, with others, was employed in throwing up breastworks, and
+digging rifle-pits on the west of the town. Expecting to hold it on the
+morrow against what they knew would be a terrible artillery fire, the
+men worked faithfully, and by midnight, works strong as the ground would
+admit of, were prepared. It was a perilous work; performed in the very
+face of the enemy's pickets;--but was only an extensive ruse, as at 1 A.
+M. we were quietly withdrawn and assigned a position in the left of the
+town. The sidewalks were muddy, and disengaging shutters from the
+windows, loose boards from fences,--anything to keep them above the
+mud,--the men composed themselves for slumber. Before 2 o'clock an
+excited Staff officer had the Brigade again in line, and after moving
+and halting until 4 A. M., we crossed the lower bridge in much lighter
+order than when we entered the place; for notwithstanding urgent
+solicitations of officers, from Brigadier down, permission was refused
+the men to obtain their knapsacks. Besides the loss of several thousand
+dollars to the Government in blankets and overcoats, hundreds of
+valuable knapsacks, and even money in considerable sums, were lost to
+the men. The matter is all the more disgraceful when we consider the
+abundance of time, and the fact, that details had been sent by the
+Colonels to arrange the knapsacks upon the sidewalk, in order that they
+could be taken up while the command would pass. It was marched by
+another route, however, and in the cold, pelting rain, the men, while
+marching up the opposite slopes of the Rappahannock, had ample reason to
+reflect upon the cold forethought that could crowd a Head-quarters'
+train, and deprive them of their proper allowance of clothing. Six hours
+later, our Division had the credit of furnishing about the only booty
+left by the army that the Rebels found upon their reoeccupation of the
+town.
+
+Sadly and quietly, the troops retrod the familiar mud of their old camp
+grounds. The movement had been a failure--a costly one in private and
+national sacrifices,--and no one felt it more keenly than the
+broad-shouldered, independent, and much injured Burnside. Strange that
+this costly sacrifice should have been offered up on ground hallowed in
+our early struggle for freedom--that the bodies of our brave volunteers,
+stripped by traitor hands, should lie naked on the plain that bears a
+monument to that woman of many virtues, "Mary, the mother of
+Washington"--that ground familiar to the early boyhood of the Great
+Patriot, should have been the scene of one of the noblest, although
+unsuccessful, contests of the war. Fit altar for such a sacrifice! A
+shrine for all time of devout patriots, who will here renew their
+vows,--of fidelity to this God-given Government,--of eternal enmity to
+traitors,--and thus consecrate to posterity the heavy population we have
+left in the Valley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+_The Sorrows of the Sutler--The Sutler's Tent--Generals
+manufactured by the Dailies--Fighting and Writing--A Glandered
+Horse--Courts-martial--Mania of a Pigeon-hole General on the
+Subject--Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel in Strait-Jackets._
+
+
+If the reader can imagine the contents of his nearest corner grocery
+thrown confusedly together under a canvas covering, he will have a
+tolerably correct idea of the interior of a Sutler's tent. Probably, to
+make the likeness more truthful, sardines, red herring, and cheese,
+should be more largely represented than is customary in a corner
+grocery.
+
+Our Sutler, although upon his first campaign, was no novice in the
+craft. He could be hail-fellow-well-met with the roughest of crowds
+thronging the outside of his rude counter, and at the same time keep an
+eye upon the cash drawer. And he was behind no one in "casting his bread
+upon the waters," in the shape of trifling presents and hospitable
+welcomes, in order that it might return at the next pay-day.
+Notwithstanding all his tact, however, Tom Green was in many respects an
+awkward, haphazard fellow, continually in difficulty, although as
+continually fortunate in overcoming it. His troubles were known to the
+Regiment, as the Sutler's interests were individualized to a great
+extent, and while all might be amused, he was never beyond the pale of
+sympathy. During the long winter evenings, the barrels and boxes in his
+tent seated a jovial crowd of officers, who in games and with
+thrice-told stories, would while away what would otherwise be tedious
+hours. Not unfrequently was the Chaplain, who quartered close by,
+disturbed with a "sound of revelry by night," to have his good-humor
+restored in the morning by a can of pickled lobster or brandied
+cherries.
+
+On one of the merriest of the merry nights of the holidays, our Western
+Virginia Captain was the centre of a group of officers engaged in gazing
+intently upon a double page wood-cut, in one of the prominent
+illustrated weeklies, that at one time might have represented the
+storming of Fort Donelson, but then did duty by way of illustrating a
+"Gallant Charge at Fredericksburg."
+
+"There it is again," said the Captain. "Not one half of our Generals are
+made by honest efforts. Their fighting is nothing like the writing that
+is done for them. They don't rely so much upon their own genius as upon
+that of the reporter who rides with their Staffs. By George, if old
+Rosey in Western Virginia----"
+
+"Dry up on that, Captain," interrupted a brother officer. "Old Pigey is
+the hero of the day. He understands himself. Didn't you notice how
+concertedly all the dailies after the fight talked about the cool,
+courageous man of science; and just look at this how it backs it all up.
+Old Rosey, as you call him, never had half as many horses shot under him
+at one time. Just see them kicking and floundering about him, and the
+General away ahead on foot, between our fire and the Rebels, as cool as
+when he took the long pull at his flask in the hollow."
+
+"And half the men will testify that that was the only cool moment he saw
+during the whole fight."
+
+"No matter," continued the other, "he has the inside track of the
+reporters, and he is all right with all who 'smell the battle from
+afar.'"
+
+"Well, there's no denying old Pigey was brave, but he was as crazy as a
+boy with a bee in his breeches," said the Captain, holding up the
+caricature to the admiration of the crowded tent. "Our Division gets the
+credit of it at any rate. Bully for our Division!"
+
+"Not one word," breaks in the Poetical Lieutenant, "of Butterfield, with
+his cool, Napoleonic look, as he rode along our line preparatory to the
+charge; or of Fighting Old Joe, unwilling to give up the field; or of
+our difficulty in clambering up the slope, getting by the artillery,
+which made ranks confused, and so forth, but
+
+          'On we move, though to self-slaughter,
+          Regular as rolling water.'
+
+Never mind criticizing, boys. It will sound well at home. We did our
+duty, at any rate, if we did not do it exactly as represented in the
+picture. The reporter was not there to see for himself, and he must take
+somebody's word, and it is a feather in our cap that he has taken
+Pigey's."
+
+The conversation was at this stage interrupted by the sudden entry of
+the Adjutant, with a loud call for the Sutler. That individual,
+notwithstanding the unusual excitement of the night, had been singularly
+quiet. Rising from his buffalo in the corner, he approached the
+Adjutant with a countenance so full of apprehension and alarm as to
+elicit the inquiry from the crowd of "What's the matter with the
+Sutler?"
+
+"He hasn't felt well since I told him a few hours ago," said a
+Lieutenant, a lawyer by profession, "that Sutlers were liable to be
+court-martialed."
+
+"And he'll feel worse," adds the Adjutant, "when he hears this letter
+read."
+
+Amid urgent calls for the letter, the Adjutant mounted a box, and by the
+light of a dip held by the Captain, proceeded to read a letter signed by
+the Commanding General of the Division, and considerably blurred, which
+ran somewhat in this wise:
+
+     "COLONEL:--
+
+     "Is your Sutler sagacious?
+
+     "Has he ordinary honesty?
+
+     "Has he the foresight common among business men? Is he likely to be
+     imposed upon?"
+
+The letter was greeted with roars of laughter that were not diminished
+by the dismay of the Sutler. The Adjutant was forthwith requested by one
+of the crowd to suggest to the Colonel to reply--
+
+"That our Sutler was a sagacious animal. That he had the honesty
+ordinary among Sutlers. That if the General was disposed to deal with
+him, he would find out that he had the foresight common among business
+men, especially in the way of calculating his profits; and that as far
+as making change was concerned, he was not at all likely to be imposed
+upon."
+
+Loud calls were now made upon the Sutler for an explanation, and with
+look and tones that indicated that with him at least it was no laughing
+matter, he commenced--
+
+"On the forenoon of the day that we crossed into Fredericksburg----"
+
+"We crossed!" roared the Captain. "Well, that's cool for a man who
+suddenly recollected when that Quarter-Master was killed by a shell near
+the Lacy House, just before our brigade crossed, that he had business in
+Washington."
+
+"Well, then, that _you_ crossed," continued the Sutler, correcting
+himself hastily, to allow the crowd to make as little capital as
+possible out of his blunder, "the General sent for me, and said that he
+had been informed that I thought of going to Washington, and wanted to
+know whether I would take a horse with me;--pointing to one that was
+blanketed, and that one of his orderlies was leading. I looked upon it
+as an order to take the horse, and thought that I might as well put a
+good face on the matter. So I told him that I would take it with
+pleasure. Well, I mounted the horse, thinking that I might as well ride,
+and took the road for Aquia. But I found out after half an hour's
+travel, that the horse was very weak,--in fact hardly able to bear me,
+and so I took the halter strap in hand and trudged along by his side.
+Presently I noticed a very bad smell. Carrion is so common here along
+the road that I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but the smell
+continued, and got worse, and I thought it strange that the carrion
+should keep with me. By and by I noticed his nostrils, and then found
+out to my rage that I, a Regimental Sutler, accustomed to drive good
+nags, was leading a glandered horse in a country where horse flesh was
+cheap as dirt. Well, at Aquia we had a great time getting the horse on
+the boat,--indeed, he fell off the gangway, and we had to fish him out
+of the water. The passengers crowded me, with the horse, into a little
+corner in the stern of the boat, and looked at me as if I deserved
+lynching for bringing him on board. But that was nothing to the trouble
+I had with him in Washington. After the boat landed, I led that horse
+around from one stable to another in Washington for four mortal hours,
+but couldn't get him in anywhere; and besides they threatened to
+prosecute me if I did not have him shot. Finding that I could do nothing
+else, I gave a man three dollars to have him taken away and shot. The
+thing bothered me mightily. I did not want to write to old Pigey, for
+fear that he might take some course to prevent me from collecting the
+greenbacks due me in the Regiment, and I did not like to tell him in
+person. Well, I have been putting it off and off for nearly a week past
+since my return--my mind made up to tell him all about it, but delaying
+as long as possible, until this afternoon he happened to see me, and in
+about half an hour afterward sent for me. It was after three o'clock, an
+unsafe time with the General, and I expected there would be the d----l
+to pay. From the way in which he asked me to be seated, shook hands with
+me, and went on inquiring about my stock and business, and so forth, I
+saw at once that he knew nothing of it. All the while I was fairly
+trembling in my boots. At last says he:
+
+"'Well, how did you leave the horse?' and without waiting for an answer,
+went on to say that he was a favorite animal, highly recommended by the
+Ohio Captain he had purchased him from, and wound up by repeating the
+inquiry.
+
+"There was no chance to back out now, and gathering my breath for the
+effort, said I--
+
+"'General, I regret to say, that your horse is dead.'
+
+"'Dead! did you say?' echoed the General, rising.
+
+"'Yes, sir; I was compelled to have him shot.'
+
+"'Shot! did you say, sir?' advancing; 'shot! compelled to have him shot,
+sir! By G--d, sir, I would like to know, sir, who would _compel_ you to
+have a horse of mine shot, sir.'
+
+"'He was glandered,' said I timidly.
+
+"'Sir! sir!! sir!!! d----d lie, sir,--mouth as sweet as sugar. D----d
+lie, sir,' retorted the General.
+
+"The General was furiously mad, his eyes flashing, and all the while he
+took quick and long steps up and down his marquee.
+
+"I attempted an explanation, but he would listen to none; and kept on
+repeating 'glandered!' 'shot!' and scowling at times at me;--saying,
+too, 'By G--d, sir, this matter must be investigated.'
+
+"'General,' said I, at length, 'in justice to myself, I would like'----
+
+"'Justice to yourself!' shouted the General, looking at me as if he
+believed me mean enough to murder my grandmother. 'Who the h--l ever
+heard of a sutler being entitled to any justice?----you, sir, I'll teach
+you justice. Get out of my tent, sir.'
+
+"I thought it best not to wait for another opportunity to get away, and
+as I sloped I heard the General swearing at me until I had passed the
+Surgeon's tent. You see what makes the matter worse with the General is,
+that he has been told several times that the horse was unsound, but
+would not admit that as much of a horseman as he professed to be, had
+been taken in by the 'Buckeye Officer.'"
+
+The recital of the story appeared to have lightened the load upon the
+breast of the sutler, and he wound up somewhat humorously, by telling
+the crowd that there was another on the list to be court-martialed, and
+that they must give him all possible aid and comfort.
+
+"Be easy, sutler! there are too many ahead of you on that list,"
+observed an officer. "Your case can't be reached for some time yet. It
+is admitted on all sides that our material, officers and men, are as
+good as any in the army; and, for all that, although one of the smallest
+divisions, we have more courts-martial than any other division. Why,
+just look at it. A day or two before the battle of Fredericksburg,
+twenty-three officers were released from arrest. Thirteen of them,
+Lieutenants under charges for lying, as old Pigey termed it, when, in
+fact, it was nothing more than a simple misunderstanding of one of his
+night orders, such as any men might make. Poor fellows! over one-half of
+them are out of his power now; but I wouldn't wonder if the General
+would be presumptuous and malignant enough to respectfully refer their
+cases to the Chancery of Heaven, with endorsements to suit himself!"
+
+"Well, that brave Lieutenant," said the Captain, "who asked permission
+of the Colonel to charge with our regiment when himself and squad had
+become separated from his own, has been reinstated. You know that at the
+time old Pigey gave permission to the Colonels to send Volunteer
+Officers before the board for examination, the Lieutenant-Colonel of his
+regiment, instead of sending him a written order, as was customary,
+sought him out when engaged in conversation with some non-commissioned
+officers of his command, and in an insulting manner gave him a verbal
+order to report. They had some hot talk about it, and in the course of
+it the Lieutenant said that 'he'd be d----d if he came into the army to
+study tactics; he came to fight,' and on the strength of that, the
+General had him tried and dismissed. Our Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel
+sent up a statement to 'Burney,' giving a glowing account of his gallant
+conduct in the fight; and the General seeing how dead in earnest he was
+when he said he came to fight, restored him to his position."
+
+"I am very much afraid," said the Lieutenant, slowly, interrupted by
+frequent whiffs at a well-colored meerschaum, "that the Colonel and
+Lieutenant-Colonel will have difficulty to save themselves."
+
+"Save themselves!" echoed several, from different parts of the tent,
+their faces hardly visible through the increasing smoke. "Why, what's in
+the wind now?"
+
+"A good deal more than a great many of you think," continued the
+Adjutant. "I think I see the dawning of considerable difficulty. The
+Colonel, you recollect, was compelled to correct our Division-General in
+some of his commands, to prevent confusion; and the General, although
+clearly in the wrong, submitted with a bad grace; and then at the last
+review you all remember how a whiffet chanced to yelp at the heels of
+the Staff horses, and how the General--it was after three, you
+recollect, G--d d----d the puppy and its ancestry, particularly its
+mother, until his Staff tittered behind him, and the Regiments of his
+command, officers and men, particularly ours, fairly roared. And then,
+too, when General Burnside saluted the colors, and requested Pigey to
+ride along, how he started off with his Staff, leaving us all at a
+'Present Arms;' and how the quick eye of Old Joe saw the blunder; and
+how he called the General's attention to it, without effect, until
+'Burney' sharply yelled out, 'General, you had better bring your men to
+a shoulder, sir;' and then, how the General, amid increased tittering
+and laughter, rode back, and with a face like scarlet squeaked
+out--'Division! Shoulder arms!' Now I have heard that the General blames
+the Field Officers of our Regiment with a good deal of that laughter;
+and that and this Sutler matter will make him provide a pretext for
+another Court-martial at an early day."
+
+          "Double, double, toil and trouble,"
+
+said the poetical Lieutenant. "Why, the Adjutant talks as if he could
+see the witches over the pot; certainly--
+
+          'No lateness of life gives him mystical lore.'"
+
+"No, but--
+
+          'Coming events cast their shadows before.'"
+
+continued the Adjutant, finishing the couplet. "I do not know that any
+gift of prophecy is given unto me, but I will venture to predict that
+the pretext will be that very order,--outrageous and unreasonable as it
+is,--that our Brigadier not only flatly and positively refused to obey
+before he left, but told his command that it was unlawful and
+unreasonable, and should not be obeyed."
+
+"What! that dress-coat order," cried the Western Virginia Captain,
+springing to his feet; "compel a man who has two new blouses, and who
+belongs to a regiment that came out with blouses and never had
+dress-coats, to put a dress-coat in his knapsack besides, when his
+clothing account is almost exhausted, and the campaign only half
+through. Is that the order you mean? By George, you must think that old
+Pigey is only going to live and do business after three o'clock in the
+afternoon, if you think that he will insist upon that order. Our
+Brigadier did right to disobey it. Old Rosey would have put any officer
+in irons, who----"
+
+"But, Captain," resumed the Adjutant, "unfortunately we are not in
+Western Virginia, and not under old Rosey, as you call him, but in the
+Army of the Potomac, where Red Tape clogs progress more than Virginia
+mud ever did, and where position is attained, not so much by the merit
+of the officer, as by the hold he may be able to get upon the favoritism
+of the War Department."
+
+"Is it possible," continued the Captain, thrusting his hands into the
+lowest depths of his breeches pockets, and casting upon the Adjutant a
+half inquiring, half reflecting look, "that this Regiment, which the
+General himself admits is one of the best disciplined in his Division,
+and which has been one of the most harmonious and orderly, is to be
+imposed upon in this way by a whimsical superior officer, who, whatever
+his reputation for science may be, has shown himself over and over again
+to have no sense! I tell you, our men can't stand it. Just look at my
+own Company, for instance, nearly all married men, families dependent
+upon them for support, and now when they have each two lined blouses, as
+good as new, and their clothing account about square, they are to take
+seven dollars and a half of their hard earned pay--more than half a
+month's wages--and buy a coat that can be of no service, and that must
+be thrown away the first march. I do not believe that the Government
+designs that our Volunteer Regiments should be compelled to take both
+blouses and dress coats. The General had better enter into partnership
+with some shoddy contractor, if he intends giving orders of this kind.
+I tell you, the men will not take them."
+
+"Come, Captain, no 'murmuring or muttering' against the powers that be,"
+said the Adjutant. "The men will either take them, in case the order is
+made, or go to the Rip-raps. I am inclined to think that the Field
+Officers will not see the men imposed upon. And at the same time they
+will not bear the brunt of disobeying the order themselves, and not let
+the men run any risk. It is hard to tell," continued the Adjutant, in a
+measured tone, refilling his pipe as he spoke, "what it will result in;
+but Pigey is in power, and like all in authority, has his toadies about
+him, and you may make up your minds that he will not be sparing in his
+charges, or in the testimony to support them. Our Colonel and
+Lieut.-Colonel, I know, feel outraged at the bare idea of being
+subjected to such an order. They are both earnest men, have both made
+heavy sacrifices to enter the service, and have never failed in duty,
+although, like most volunteer officers of spirit, they are somewhat
+restiff under authority. The Colonel, being an old soldier, and
+thoroughly acquainted with his work, is especially restiff under the
+authority of an officer so poorly fitted for his position as our
+Division General. But our turn must come. Every Regiment in the Division
+has suffered from his Court-martialling and studied interference, and so
+far we have been fortunate enough to escape. And with the insight I now
+have, I believe the glandered horse and the little whiffet that yelped
+and disturbed the General's ideas of a proper Review, will prove to be
+at the bottom of the whole matter."
+
+"Tom," interrupted the Captain, "you will have to put your record in
+better shape."
+
+"How can I do it?" said the Sutler.
+
+"By sending Pigey a bill for the three dollars you paid to have the
+horse shot."
+
+The crowd boisterously applauded the proposition, and insisted upon its
+execution. Desultory conversation followed until "Taps" dispersed them
+to their quarters.
+
+Grumbling is claimed as a soldier's privilege, and the Sutler's tent
+being a lounging place when off duty, becomes a place of grumbling, much
+like the place of wailing that the Jews have on the outskirts of
+Jerusalem.
+
+A fortnight later saw the crowd in their old position, but with
+countenances in which it was difficult to say whether anxiety or anger
+predominated.
+
+"Fellows, it is terminating just as the Adjutant prophesied a short time
+ago in this very place," said a Captain slightly past the prime of life,
+but of vigorous build. "In trying to keep the men out of dress coats,
+the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel have got themselves into all manner
+of trouble, and there is no let-up with old Pigey. I saw them this
+morning both as cheerful as crickets, and determined to have the matter
+thoroughly investigated."
+
+"Did they intimate any opinion as to what we ought to do?" inquired the
+Adjutant.
+
+"Not a word. In that respect they say just as they did before they were
+placed in close confinement, that it is a case in which each man must
+act for himself. They are willing to shoulder the responsibility of
+their own acts, and were very indignant when they heard that Pigey had
+ordered the other Brigade under arms, and two pieces of artillery to be
+trained upon our camp, as if the whole Regiment was guilty of mutiny,
+when there was not at the same time a more quiet or orderly Regiment in
+camp."
+
+"They understand," remarked the Adjutant, "however, why that was done.
+The General must have something to justify this unusually harsh
+treatment. A charge of simple disobedience of orders would not do it, so
+he charges them with mutiny, and trumps up this apprehension and parade
+to appear consistent. The Lieutenant-Colonel anticipated it, I know. I
+heard him say, while under simple arrest, that he believed that after
+three o'clock they would be placed in close confinement, and on the
+strength of it some letters were sent by a civilian giving full details.
+Well, I am glad that they are in good spirits."
+
+"In the very best," replied the Captain, "although the General starts as
+if he intended giving them a tough through. The Sibley that they were
+turned into late last night, was put up over ground so wet that you
+couldn't make a track upon it without it would fill with water, and the
+Lieutenant-Colonel had to sleep upon this ground with a single blanket,
+as it was late when his servant Charlie came to the guard with his roll
+of blankets, and the General would not permit him to pass. In
+consequence he awoke this morning chilled, wet through, and with a fair
+start for a high fever. And then they are denied writing material,
+books, even a copy of the Regulations. The General relented
+sufficiently, to tell an aid to inform them, that they might correspond
+with their families if they would submit the correspondence first to
+inspection at Division Head-quarters; to which they replied--that 'the
+General might insult them, but could not compel them to humiliate their
+families.' No one is permitted to see them unless by special permission
+of the General."
+
+"And when I saw those three guards to-day pacing about that Sibley,"
+excitedly spoke the Virginia Captain, "I felt like mounting a
+cracker-box in camp and asking the men to follow me, and find out on
+what grounds, this puss-in-boots outraged in this way men more
+well-meaning and determined than himself in the suppression of this
+rebellion. But it will all come right. They are not to be crowded clear
+out of sight in a single day. One of my men told me that he was present
+on duty when that wharf-rat of an Adjutant, that the exhorting Colonel
+is trying to make an Adjutant-General of, came into the General's tent
+with the Lieutenant-Colonel, and he said that the General asked the
+Colonel whether he was still determined to disobey the lawful order of
+his superior officer, the Commanding General of the Division?
+
+"'The legality of the order is what I question,' said the Colonel. 'An
+order to be lawful should at least be reasonable. That order is
+unreasonable, unjust to the men, and I cannot conscientiously obey it.'
+
+"'This money for the coats does not come out of your pocket,' said the
+General, blandly. 'Why need you concern yourself about it?'
+
+"'It comes out of the pockets of my men, General,' said the Colonel,
+'and I consider it my duty to concern myself sufficiently to prevent
+imposition upon them.'
+
+"'Tut,' said the General. 'You wouldn't hear a Regular officer say
+that.'
+
+"'The greater shame for them,' said the Colonel. 'My men are my
+neighbors and friends. They look to me to protect their interests. As a
+general thing the Regulars are recruited from the purlieus of great
+cities, and are men of no character.'
+
+"'Colonel,' said the General, sternly, 'listen to this definition of
+'Mutiny,' and then, as you are a lawyer, think of your present
+position.'
+
+"The Colonel heard it read and replied that 'it had nothing whatever to
+do with the case, as there was no mutiny, nor even an approach to it.'
+Considering the time of day, the General, so far, had been unusually
+cool, but he could keep in no longer.
+
+"'Colonel,' said he, in a loud, angry tone, as he advanced towards him,
+'by G--d, sir, you are mutinous, sir!'
+
+"'General,' replied the Colonel, coolly, and looking him full in the
+eye, 'with all due deference to your superior rank, permit me to say,
+that if you say I am guilty of mutiny you overstep the bounds of truth.'
+
+"The Colonel's confident manner rather staggered the General, and he
+turned to the Adjutant, who has been his runner throughout this matter,
+and called upon him to substantiate his assertion; which he did.
+
+"With the remark that he would not dare to make such false assertions
+away from the General's head-quarters, the Colonel turned upon him
+indignantly, and the General called for the Provost Guard to conduct him
+to the Sibley. Now I tell you, fellows," continued the Captain, "the
+General will make nothing out of this matter."
+
+"He has his malice gratified by the present punishment he is subjecting
+them to, as if fearful that they might come unharmed from a
+Court-martial. But I don't believe that he will be able to get the
+Regiment into dress coats," remarked the Adjutant.
+
+The Adjutant was right. The Regiment did not get into dress coats;
+although its Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel slipped into strait-jackets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+_Dress Coats versus Blouses--Military Law--Bill the
+Cook--Courts-Martial--Important Decision in Military Law--'A Man with
+Two Blouses on' can be compelled to put a Dress Coat on top--A Colored
+French Cook and a Beefy-browed Judge-Advocate--The Mud March--No
+Pigeon-holing on a Whiskey Scent--Old Joe in Command--Dissolution of
+Partnership between the Dutch Doctor and Chaplain._
+
+
+Necessity knows no law. Military law springs from the necessity of the
+case, and may be said, therefore, to be equivalent to no law. However
+plausible the principles embodied in the compact periods of Benet and De
+Hart may appear, in actual practice they dwindle to little else than the
+will of the officer who details the court. General Officers, tried at
+easy intervals, before pains-taking courts, in large cities, may have
+opportunity for equal and exact justice; but Heaven help their inferiors
+who have their cases put through at lightning speed, before a court
+under marching orders, and expecting momentarily to move.
+
+The Act of Congress, with a wise prescience of the jealousies and
+bickerings always arising between Regulars and Volunteers, provides that
+Regulars shall be tried by Regular, and Volunteers by Volunteer
+Officers. In practice, the spirit of the law is evaded by the
+subterfuge, that a Regular Officer, temporarily in command of
+Volunteers, is _pro tempore_ a Volunteer Officer. In the Mexican War,
+where the number of Volunteer Officers was comparatively small, there
+may have been a necessity for this. With our present immense Volunteer
+force there can be none whatever; and the practice is the more
+inexcusable, when we consider the great amount of legal as well as
+military ability among the officers of this force. The gross injustice
+of this violation of the act, must be apparent to any one upon a
+moment's reflection. Officers, whose only offence may be their belonging
+to the Volunteer Service, are too frequently subjected to the tender
+mercy of a Board of Martinets;--men of long service and tried ability,
+degraded by the fiat of a court composed of officers as tender in
+intellect as in years, and whose only recommendation to be members of
+the court, is their recent transfer from lessons in gunnery and
+drills;--with patent leather knapsacks, to field or higher positions in
+the Volunteer Service. Thus, the officer whose earnestness in the cause
+and heavy sacrifice of family ties and business affairs, first raised
+the command,--who grew with its growth during months, perhaps years, of
+hard service,--saw through his untiring efforts the awkwardness of his
+men change gradually for the precision of the veteran,--not unfrequently
+by the snap judgment of men whose only service has been in Pay,
+Quarter-Master, Commissary Departments,--anywhere but in a Fighting
+Department,--finds himself dishonored, his service thrown aside for
+naught, and his worst enemy the misuse of the laws he had taken arms to
+vindicate.
+
+Not an officer or soldier but must recollect a case in point. Now, this
+mainly arises from the undue and unjust deference paid by the War
+Department to Regular Officers, and the curse that attends them and
+upholds them--Red Tape. _Undue and unjust deference._ Does not the
+history of the Army of the Potomac prove it? Its heroic fighting, but
+ill-starred generalship!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Halloo, Bill! what news from the Sibley?" shouted one of a group of
+officers who sat and lay upon the ground, cheerfully discussing hard
+tack and coffee in the camp of a grand picket reserve, near the
+Rappahannock. The man addressed would, in build, have made a good
+recruit for the armies of New Amsterdam in their warfare against the
+Swedes, so graphically described by Irving. Short and thickly set, with
+a face radiant as a brass kettle in a preserving season, trousers thrust
+in a pair of cast-away top boots, the legs of which fell in ungainly
+folds about his ankles, a greasy blouse, tucked in at the waist-band,
+and a cap ripped behind in the vain effort to accommodate it to a head
+of Websterian dimensions. With all his shortcomings, and they were
+legion, Bill's education, unfailing humor and kindness of heart made him
+a favorite at regimental Head-quarters, where he had long been employed
+as an attendant. When the sickness of the Lieutenant-Colonel grew
+serious in the Sibley, Bill took his post by the side of his blankets,
+and in well-meaning attention made up what he lacked in tenderness as a
+nurse.
+
+"Nothing new since the trial," drawled out Bill, seating himself
+meanwhile, and mopping with his coat sleeve the perspiration that stood
+in beads upon his forehead.
+
+"Since the trial!" echoed the officer. "Why, they have not had notice
+yet, and the General said he would give them ample opportunity for
+preparation for trial."
+
+"So he did," continued Bill. "They were put into the Sibley on Monday
+night, and on Thursday night following, about half-past ten, when it was
+raining in torrents, and storming so that the guards and myself could
+scarcely keep the old tent up, that sucker-mouthed Aid of old Pigey's
+popped his head inside the flaps and handed the Colonel and
+Lieut.-Colonel each a letter. Both letters went on to say, that their
+trial would take place the next day, at ten o'clock, at Pigey's
+Head-quarters, and that each letter contained a copy of the charges and
+specifications, and that, in the meanwhile, they could prepare for
+trial, provide counsel, and so forth. The best part of two sheets of
+large-sized letter paper was filled with the charges against each, all
+in Pigey's hand-writing.
+
+     "'Disrespectful language towards the General Commanding Division;'
+     'Conduct tending to Mutiny;' 'Disobedience of Orders;' and
+     'Violation of at least half a dozen different articles of war.'
+
+"The ink was green yet, as if it had all been done after three o'clock.
+The Lieutenant-Colonel, you know, told that wharf rat of an Adjutant
+before the General, that he would not dare to make such mis-statements
+away from Division Head-quarters. Well, on the strength of that, he had
+him charged with sending a challenge to fight a duel, and telling his
+superior officer that he lied. Lord! when I heard them read, I thought
+they ought to be thankful that one of the darkies about Division
+Head-quarters hadn't died in the meanwhile, or there would have been a
+charge of murder. It might just as well, at any rate, have been murder
+as mutiny, that we all know. Time for trial!--lots of time! Just the
+time to hunt a lawyer, consult law books, and drum up testimony."
+
+"Timed purposely, of course," broke in the officer, indignantly, "and
+the Court, no doubt, packed to suit. But," his face brightening, "there
+is an appeal to Father Abraham."
+
+"It is all very well to talk about Father Abraham," continued Bill, in
+the same drawling tone; "but if you have to hunt up Honest Old Abe
+through the regular military channels, as they say you have to, he'll
+seem about as far off as the first old Father Abraham did to that rich
+old Cockey that had a big dry on in a hot place."
+
+"Bill," said the officer, as he saw the crowd inclined to laugh at the
+remark, "this is by far too serious a matter to jest about. Here are two
+men of character and position, devoted to the cause body and soul,
+completely at the mercy of an officer whose conduct is a reproach to his
+command, and who is malicious alike in deeds and words."
+
+"Especially the latter," interrupted Bill, more hurriedly than before.
+"The Colonel says he was chief witness, and swore the charges right
+straight through, without wincing. The Judge Advocate, they said, was a
+right clever gentlemanly fellow, but ignorant of law, and completely at
+the disposal of the General. I saw him several times when I was passing
+backwards and forwards, and he looked to me as if the beef was a little
+too thick on the outside of his forehead, for the brains to be active
+inside. Still, the Colonels have no fault to find with him, except that
+between times he would talk about drinking to Little Mac, and brag about
+the prospect, as the papers seem to say, of Fitz John Porter's being
+cleared. But then most of the Court did as much at that as he did. He
+did his duty in the trial, I guess, as well as his knowledge and old
+Pigey's will would allow."
+
+"Well, Bill, give us some particulars of the trials, if you know them,"
+suggested an officer of a neighboring regiment--the party during the
+conversation being increased by additions of officers and privates.
+
+"I only know what I saw passing back and forth, and what I heard from
+the Colonels themselves. They wouldn't allow any one to go within three
+yards of the tent in which they held Court; but I'll give you what I
+have, although to do it I must go back a little:--Before it was light on
+the day of trial the Major posted off to our Corps Commander with an
+application for a continuance, on the ground of want of time for
+preparation. About daylight the General came out, rubbing his eyes,
+wanting to know who that early bird was?
+
+"'Playing Orderly, sir,' said he, as his eye lit upon the letter in the
+Major's hand. 'Fine occupation for a man of six feet two, with a Major's
+straps upon his shoulders.'
+
+"The Major wilted till he felt about two feet six, but mustered presence
+of mind sufficient to tell the General his errand, and how his personal
+solicitude had prompted him to perform it himself. The General heard him
+kindly; stated that he had no doubt but that the Court would act
+favorably upon the application, and that it should be referred to them.
+The Court, when it met, acted favorably, so far as to give the Colonel,
+who was tried first, fifteen minutes to hunt a lawyer. But they wouldn't
+let the Lieut.-Colonel act, as he was a party, and several others were
+excluded on the ground of being witnesses, although they took good care
+not to call them. Both pleaded guilty to the 'simple disobedience of
+orders,' and the Court was ashamed to try them upon anything besides but
+the 'disrespectful conduct;' in regard to which old Pigey's assertions
+were taken, instead of the circumstances being proved. The Colonel was
+too indignant at the treatment to set up any defence, but the
+Lieutenant-Colonel cross-examined old Pigey until his testimony looked
+like a box of fish-bait. The General swore that he had given him 'the
+lie,' but upon being questioned by the Colonel, stated that 'he did not
+believe the Colonel intended to call his personal veracity into
+question.' In the same manner he had to explain away that duelling
+charge. At last he got so confused that he would ram wood into the stove
+to gain time, bite the ends of his moustache, play with the rim of his
+hat, and when cornered as to the Lieutenant-Colonel's character as an
+officer, to relieve himself, stated;--that he must say that the Colonel
+had hitherto obeyed every order with cheerfulness, promptitude, great
+zeal and intelligence, and that his intercourse with the Commanding
+General had been marked by great courtesy at all times."
+
+"The Colonel also stated further, that he had testimony to contradict
+that Adjutant, or Wharf-Rat, as you know him best by. He had told me
+before the trial to tell that young law student, Tom, a private of Co.
+C, who heard the conversation that the Adjutant had testified to, to be
+within calling distance during the trial, with his belt on, hair combed,
+and looking as neat as possible. Well, in Tom came, his face and eyes
+swelled up from a bad cold, a stocking that had been a stranger to soap
+and water for one long march at least, tied about his neck to cure a
+sore throat, his belt on properly, but his blouse pockets stuffed out
+beyond it with six months' correspondence, and his matted and bleached
+head of hair, through the vain effort to comb it, resembling the heads
+of Feejee Islanders, in Sunday-school books. A smile played around the
+lips of the gentlemanly old Massachusetts Colonel, who presided over the
+Court, as he surveyed him upon entering, and a titter ran around the
+Board, especially among some of the young West-Pointers. The Colonel's
+face colored, and the Judge Advocate's eyes glowed as if he had a soft
+block. But Tom was a singed cat; he always was a slovenly fellow, you
+know, and he turned out to be a file for the viper.
+
+"'Colonel,' said the Judge Advocate haughtily, 'have you any officers
+who are prepared to vouch for the character and credibility of this
+witness, as I see he is but a private?'
+
+"'Yes, sir, if the Court please,' retorted the Colonel
+indignantly,--then remembering how this same Judge Advocate had upon
+former occasions affected to despise privates, he added: 'His character
+and credibility are quite as good as those of half the shoulder-strapped
+gentry of the Corps.'
+
+"'Colonel,' said the President, blandly, 'there is an old rule requiring
+privates to be vouched for, rarely insisted upon, at this day, however,'
+casting, as he said this, a half reproachful look upon the Judge
+Advocate; 'but we desire you to understand that your word is as good as
+that of any officer before this Court.'
+
+"The Colonel vouched for him, and Tom was examined, and contradicted
+still further than his own cross-examination had done, the statement of
+the Adjutant, besides snubbing the Judge Advocate handsomely. A string
+of witnesses, from our Brigadier down to all the line officers of the
+command, was then offered to prove character, but the Court very
+formally told the Colonel that a superior officer, the Commanding
+General of the Division, had already testified to this, and that this
+rendered the testimony of officers inferior in rank quite superfluous.
+So you see from this and Tom's case, Justice don't go it blind in
+Courts-Martial, but keeps one eye open to see whether the witness has
+shoulder-straps on or not."
+
+"But, Bill," inquired a lawyer in the crowd, "did not the Colonel offer
+to prove that the Regiment was amply supplied with clothing, and that
+the order was unreasonable, and that it was not therefore a lawful
+order, as the law is supposed to be founded upon reason?"
+
+"Oh, yes, both did; but the Lieutenant-Colonel was told by the
+President, that if General Burnside were to order the President to make
+a requisition in dog-days for old Spartan metal helmets for his
+Regiment, he would make the requisition.
+
+"Said the Colonel, 'the President of the United States is by the
+Regulations empowered to prescribe the uniform.'
+
+"'That,' said the President, 'General Burnside must judge of. I must
+execute the order, however unreasonable it may seem, first, and question
+it afterwards.'
+
+"'Suppose the General would order you to black his boots; or,' said the
+Colonel, thinking that a little too strongly put; 'suppose that you were
+second in command of a battery lying near a peaceful and loyal town, and
+your superior, drunk or otherwise, would order you to shell it, would
+you obey the order, and question it after having murdered half the
+women and children of the place?' To which questions, however, the Court
+gave the go-by, remarking simply, that they did not suppose that the
+Colonel had any criminal intentions in disobeying the order. So, really,
+it is narrowed down to the disobedience of, to say the least, a most
+uncalled for order."
+
+"And faithful, well intentioned officers are, for what is at most but an
+honest blunder, treated like felons," said one.
+
+"From their lively and confident manner," said Bill, "I believe that
+they have assurances from Washington that all will be right. There is no
+telling how long the Lieutenant-Colonel will last under this
+confinement, however. He has failed greatly, and although so weak as to
+be unable to walk alone, the General insists upon the guards being upon
+either side whenever he has occasion to leave the tent. Even the sinks
+were dug at over one hundred yards distance from the Sibley. And the
+tent itself is located in such a manner that old Pigey can at all times
+have his vengeance gratified by a full view of it, the three guards
+about it, and my assisting the Lieutenant-Colonel from time to time. But
+the guards esteem, and we all esteem the officers inside the Sibley more
+than the General, who abuses his power in his marquee. Letters and
+newspapers come crawling under the canvas. Roast partridges, squirrels,
+apples, and delicacies that officers and men deny themselves of, find
+their way inside, and while my name is Bill Gladdon they shan't suffer
+through any lack upon my part, and I know that this is the opinion of
+all of us."
+
+"You all recollect the Sibley," said a Lieutenant, "that stands in the
+rear of old Pigey's marquee, in which he gave the collation after the
+last corps review, and welcomed our officers as he steadied himself at
+the table, with 'Here comes my gallant 210th.' The Court met in that."
+
+"Yes," resumed Bill, "the same. It stands near his cook tent, and while
+his darkies were serving up French cookery, the Judge Advocate did the
+work allotted him in endeavoring to justify by the trial, in some slight
+manner, the General's outrageous conduct. I heard that Tom said, that
+after the Judge Advocate had asked that he be vouched for, and the
+Colonel became indignant, the Judge Advocate said somewhat blandly,
+
+"'You must remember, Colonel, that this is not one of your ordinary
+Courts of Justice.'
+
+"'That it is not a Court of Justice,' retorted the Colonel, 'is very
+apparent.'
+
+"Both were put through in a hurry, at any rate. The different members of
+the Court said that they all had marching orders, and they had no sooner
+left the Sibley than they were upon horseback and on the gallop towards
+their different commands. Our Doctor had detailed an ambulance to take
+the Colonels in the rear of the Division. Old Pigey, in his usual
+morning survey of the premises, saw it in front of the Sibley, and sent
+an Orderly to take the rather lively, good-looking bays that were in it
+and exchange them for the old rips that haul the ambulance his cooks
+ride in. But we did not move then, although they say we will certainly
+to-morrow."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That inevitable "they say," the common prefix to rumors in camp as well
+as civil life, had given Bill correct information. For next morning, in
+spite of the lowering sky, the camps were all astir with busy life, and
+during the course of the forenoon column after column trudged along over
+the already soft roads in a south-westerly direction. The movement was
+the mad desperation of a Commander of undaunted energy. A vain effort to
+appease that most capricious of masters, popular clamor. The rains
+descended, and that grand army of the Potomac literally floundered in
+the mud.
+
+In an old field, thickly grown with young pines, very near the farthest
+point reached in the march, our Regiment rested towards the close of the
+last day of the advance, or to speak more truly, attempted advance.
+Fatigued with the double duty of struggling with the mud and corduroying
+the roads, the repose was heartily welcome.
+
+          "It does a fellow good to feel a little frisky,"
+
+sang, or rather shouted, a little Corporal, whom we have met before in
+these pages, as he made ridiculous efforts to infuse life into heels
+clodded with mud.
+
+"Talk as you please about old Pigey, boys, he's a regular trump on the
+whiskey question. He'll cut red-tape any day on that. Don't you see the
+boys?" continued the Corporal, addressing a crowd reposing at full
+length upon the freshly cut pine boughs, conspicuous among whom was the
+Adjutant;--pointing as he spoke to several men in uniform, but boys in
+years, who were being forced and dragged along by successive groups of
+their comrades.
+
+"Couldn't stand the Commissary--stomachs too tender. Ha! ha! Pigey and
+myself are in on that."
+
+"What is up now, Corporal?" queried the Adjutant.
+
+"Nothing is up; it's all down," retorted the Corporal, in a half
+serious air, as he saluted the Colonel respectfully. "You see, Adjutant,
+they are bits of boys at any rate, just from school, and the Commissary
+was too much for their empty stomachs. I was sent back to hurry up the
+stragglers, and while we were catching up as rapidly as possible, old
+Pigey came ploughing up the mud alongside of us, followed by that
+sucker-mouthed Aid. I saw at once that Division Head-quarters had a good
+load on. With a patronizing grin, said the General stopping short
+alongside of a wagon belonging to another corps, and that was fast
+almost up to the wagon-bed, while the mules were fairly floating,
+'What's in that wagon?' and without waiting for answer, 'whiskey, by
+G--d,' he broke out, snuffing at the same time towards the wagon. 'Boys,
+unload a couple of barrels,' he continued, good-humoredly, as if trying
+to make up for the outrage he has just committed upon the Regiment. The
+driver protested, and the wagon guards said that it could not be taken
+without an order; but it was after three, and old Pigey ripped and swore
+that his order was as good as anybody's, and the guards were frightened
+enough to let our boys roll out two barrels. No pigeon-holing on a
+whiskey scent! One barrel he ordered up to his head-quarters, and the
+head of the other was knocked in, and he told us to drink our fill, and
+at it the boys went. Tin cups, canteens, cap-covers, anything that would
+hold the article, were made use of, and they are a blue old crowd, from
+the General down. The boys had had nothing but a few hard tack during
+the day, and it was about the first drink to some, and from the way it
+tastes it must have been made out of rotten corn and not two months old,
+and altogether straggling increased considerably."
+
+"Straggling! why they are wallowing like hogs in the mud, Adjutant! It
+is a shame, and if some one of my superiors will not prefer charges
+against the General and his Adjutant, I will. Men of mine are drunk that
+I never knew to taste a drop before," indignantly exclaimed the Western
+Virginia Captain, as, with hat off, face aglow with perspiration, eyes
+flashing, and boots that indicated service in taking the soundings of
+the mud on the march, he came panting up with rapid strides. "Now, sir,
+fourteen of my best men are drunk--the first drunken man I have had
+during the campaign--and I'll be shot to death with musketry, sooner
+than punish a single man of them."
+
+"But discipline must be kept up," said the Adjutant.
+
+"Discipline! do you say, Adjutant?" retorted the Captain. "If you want
+to see discipline go to Division Head-quarters. Why old Pigey is
+prancing around like a steed at a muster,--crazy! absolutely crazy! His
+cocked hat is more crooked than ever, and the knot of his muffler is at
+the back of his neck, and the ends flying like wings. Just a few minutes
+ago he stopped suddenly while on a canter, right by one of my men, lying
+along the road-side, that he had made drunk, and chuckled and laughed,
+and lolled from side to side in his saddle, and then at a canter again
+rode to another one and went through the same performance. And his
+Adjutant-General--why one of my men not ten minutes ago led his horse to
+Head-quarters. He was so drunk, actually, that his eyes looked like
+those of a shad out of water a day,--his feet out of the stirrups, the
+reins loose about his horse's neck, his hands hanging listlessly down,
+and the liquor oozing out of the corners of his sucker mouth. And there
+he was, his horse carrying him about at random among the stumps, and
+officers and men laughing at him, expecting to see him go over on the
+one side or the other every moment. Now, it is a burning shame. And I,
+for one, will expose them, if it takes the hide off. Here are our
+Colonels confined just for no offence at all,--for doing their duty, in
+fact,--and this man, after having Court-martialed all that he could of
+his command, trying to demoralize the rest by whiskey. Now, sir, the
+higher the rank the more severe the punishment should be. Just before we
+started Burney had an order read that we were about to meet the enemy,
+and that every man must do his duty. And here is a General of Division,
+in command of nine thousand men, as drunk as a fool."
+
+"Let Pigey alone on the whiskey question, Captain," interrupted the
+Corporal, who had in the meantime been refreshing his inner man by a
+pull at his canteen. "He's a regular trump--yes," slapping his canteen
+as he spoke, "a full hand of trumps any time on that topic. Like other
+men, he drinks to drown his grief at our poor prospect of a fight."
+
+"A fine condition he is in to lead men into a fight;--but not much worse
+than at Fredericksburg," slowly observed the Preacher Lieutenant, who,
+as one of the crowd, had been a listener to the story of the Captain.
+"Drunkenness has cursed our army too much. But we cannot consistently be
+silent in sight of conduct like this on the part of Commanders. The
+interests of our men"----
+
+"Have a care, Lieutenant," quietly observed the Adjutant, "how you talk.
+'The interests of the men' have placed our Colonels under guard in the
+Sibley."
+
+"Not bolts, nor bars a prison make," resumed the Preacher more
+spiritedly, "and I would sooner have a quiet conscience in confinement,
+than the reproach of disgraceful conduct and command a Division."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Corduroying the entire route had not been proposed, when the army
+commenced its movement; but it became apparent to all that progress was
+only tolerable with it, and without it, impossible. On the day after the
+above conversation, the army commenced to retrace its steps. Some days,
+however, intervened before the smoke ascended from their old huts, and
+the men in lazy circles about the camp fires rehashed their
+recollections of the "mud march."
+
+Like our repulse at Fredericksburg, it was, as far as our
+Commander-in-Chief was concerned, a misfortune and not a fault. A change
+in command was evident, however, and the substitution of the
+whole-hearted, dashing Hooker for the equally earnest but more steady
+Burnside, that took place in the latter part of January, occasioned no
+surprise in the army. The new Commander went much farther, than old
+attachments had probably permitted his predecessor in going, in removing
+McClellanism. Grand Divisions were abolished; rigid inquiries into the
+comforts and conveniences of the men were frequent, and senseless
+reviews less frequent. Bakeries were established in every Brigade, and
+fresh bread and hot rolls furnished in wholesome abundance, to the great
+benefit of the Government, for hospital rolls were thereby depleted, and
+reports for duty increased. Rigid discipline and daily drills too were
+kept up, as "Old Joe" was a frequent visitor, when least expected. His
+constant solicitude for the welfare of the men, manifested by close
+personal attention, which the men themselves were witness to, rather
+than by concocted newspaper reports, by which the friends of the soldier
+in their loyal homes might be imposed upon, and the soldier himself not
+benefited, endeared him to his entire command.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One clear, cold morning, during these palmy days of the army, the men of
+the regiment nearest the Surgeon's Quarters were greatly surprised by
+the sudden exit of a small-sized sheet iron stove from the tent occupied
+by the Surgeon and Chaplain, closely followed up by the little Dutch
+Doctor in his shirt sleeves, sputtering hurriedly--
+
+"Tam schmoke pox!" and at every ejaculation bestowing a vigorous kick.
+At a reasonably safe distance in his rear was the Chaplain, in half
+undress also, remonstrating as coolly as possible,--considering that the
+stove was his property. The Doctor did not refrain, however, until its
+badly battered fragments lay at intervals upon the ground.
+
+"Efry morn, and efry morn, schmoke shust as the Tuyfel. I no need
+prepare for next world py that tam shmoke pox. Eh?" continued the
+Doctor, facing the Chaplain.
+
+"Come, Doctor," said the Chaplain, soothingly, "we ought to get along
+better than this in our department."
+
+"Shaplain's department! Eh! By G--t! One Horse-Doctor and one Shaplain
+enough for a whole Division!"
+
+The sudden appearance of Bill, the attendant upon the Colonels in the
+Sibley, at the Adjutant's quarters, had the effect of transferring
+hither the crowd, who were enjoying what proved to be a final
+dissolution of partnership between the Chaplain and the Doctor.
+
+"I know your errand, Bill," remarked the Adjutant, looking him full in
+the face. "An orderly has just handed me the General Order. But what is
+to become of the Lieutenant-Colonel?"
+
+"You only have the order dismissing the Colonel, then. There was a
+message sent about ten o'clock last night, a little after the General
+Order was received at the Sibley, stating that at day-break this morning
+the Colonel should be escorted to Aquia under guard, and that before
+leaving he should have no intercourse whatever with any of his command.
+Old Pigey also tried further to add insult to injury, by stating that
+the Lieutenant-Colonel, who cannot, from weakness, walk twenty steps,
+even though it would save his life, would be released from close
+confinement, and might have the benefit of Brigade limits in our new
+camp ground for exercise. You know that is so full of stumps and
+undergrowth that a well man can hardly get along in it."
+
+"So an officer of the Colonel's merit and services," remarked the
+Adjutant, "was dragged off before daylight, and disgraced for what was
+in its very worst light but a simple blunder, made under the most
+extenuating of circumstances. Boys, if there be faith in Stanton's
+pledged word, matters will be set right as soon as the record of the
+case reaches the War Department. I am informed that he denounced the
+whole proceeding as an outrage, and telegraphed the General; and we all
+know that the General has been spending a good portion of the time since
+the trial in Washington."
+
+"And he came back," observed Bill, "yesterday morning, in a mood unusual
+with him before three o'clock in the afternoon. He had his whole staff,
+all his orderlies and the Provost Guard out to stop a Maine Regiment
+from walking by the side of the road, when the mud was over shoe top in
+the road itself,--and he flourished that thin sword of his, and raved
+and swore and danced about until one of the Maine boys wanted to know
+who 'that little old Cockey was with a ramrod in his hand,--' and that
+set the laugh so much against him that his Aids returned their pistols
+and he his sword, and he sneaked back to his marquee, and issued an
+order requiring his whole command to stand at arms along the road side
+upon the approach of troops from either direction."
+
+"Which," remarked the Adjutant, "if obeyed, would keep them under arms
+well nigh all the time, and would provoke a collision, as it would be an
+insult to the troops of other commands, to whom the road should be
+equally free. But it is a fair sample of the judgment of Pigey."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+_The Presentation Mania--The Western Virginia Captain in the War
+Department--Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton--Capture of the Dutch
+Doctor--A Genuine Newspaper Sell._
+
+
+Presentations by men to officers should be prevented by positive orders;
+not that the recipients are not usually meritorious, but the practice by
+its prevalency is an unjust tax upon a class little able to bear it. A
+costly sword must be presented to our Captain,--intimates a man perhaps
+warmly in the Captain's confidence. Forthwith the list is started, and
+with extra guard and fatigue duty before the eyes of the men, it makes a
+unanimous circuit of the command. Active newspaper reporters, from the
+sheer merit of the officer, may be, and may be from the additional
+inducement of a little compensation, give an account of the presentation
+in one of the dailies that fills the breasts of the officer's friends
+with pride, while the decreased remittance of the private may keep back
+some creature comfort from his wife and little ones. Statistics showing
+how far these presentations are spontaneous offerings, and to what
+extent results of wire-working at Head-quarters, would prove more
+curious than creditable.
+
+Our Brigade did not escape the Presentation Mania. Never did it develop
+itself in a command, however, more spontaneously. The plain, practical
+sense of our Brigadier was the more noticeable to the men, on account of
+its marked contrast to the quibbles and conceit of the General of
+Division. The officers and men of the Brigade had with great care and
+cost selected a noble horse of celebrated stock upon which to mount
+their Brigadier, and, on a pleasant evening in March, a crowd informally
+assembled was busied in arranging for the morrow the programme of
+presentation. The General of Division, so far in the cold in the matter,
+was just then making himself sensibly felt.
+
+"Colonel," said an officer, who from the direction of Brigade
+Head-quarters neared the crowd, addressing a central figure, "you might
+as well take the General's horse out to grass awhile."
+
+"Explain yourself," say several.
+
+"Pigey has his foot in the whole matter nicely. The General, you know,
+just returned this evening from sick leave. Well, he and his friends,
+who came with him to see the presentation ceremonies, had not been at
+Head-quarters an hour before that sucker-mouthed Aid made his
+appearance, and said that he was directed by the General Commanding the
+Division to place him under arrest. The fellow was drunk, and the
+General hardly deigned to notice him. As he staggered away, he muttered
+that there were fifteen charges against him, and that he would find the
+General's grip a tight one."
+
+Amid exclamations, indicating that the perplexity of the matter could
+not prevent a sly smile at the ludicrous position in which the Brigadier
+and his friends from abroad were placed, the officer continued--
+
+"But the General brings good news from Washington. The Colonel and
+Lieutenant-Colonel of the 210th return at an early day."
+
+"Yes, sir, that is so," broke in our Western Virginia Captain, who had
+just returned from enjoying one of the furloughs at that time so freely
+distributed. "At last the War Department, or rather Mr. Secretary
+Stanton, for all the balance of the department, as far as I could learn,
+thought the delay outrageous, fulfils its promise. After the
+Lieutenant-Colonel had been at home on a sick leave for some time, and
+we all thought the matter about dropped; what should I see one day but
+his name, with thirty-two others, in a daily, under the head of
+'Dismissals from the Army.' There it was, dismissed for doing his duty,
+and published right among the names of scoundrels who had skulked five
+times from the battle-field; men charged with drunkenness, and every
+offence known to the Military Decalogue. My furlough had just come, and
+I started for Washington by the next boat, bound to see how the matter
+stood. The morning after I got there, I posted up bright and early to
+the War Department, but a sergeant near the door, with more polish on
+his boots than in his manners, told me that I had better keep shady
+until ten o'clock, as business hours commenced then. I sat down on a
+pile of old lumber near by, and passed very nearly three hours in
+wondering why so many broad-shouldered fellows, who could make a sabre
+fall as heavy as the blow of a broad-axe, were lounging about or going
+backward and forward upon errands that sickly boys might do as well. As
+it grew nearer ten, able-bodied, bright-looking officers, Regulars, as I
+was told, educated at Uncle Sam's expense to fight, elegantly
+shoulder-strapped, passed in to drive quills in a quiet department,
+'remote from death's alarms,' and I wondered if some spirited clerks and
+schoolmasters that I knew, who would have been willing to have gone bent
+double under knapsacks, if the Surgeon would have accepted them, would
+not have performed the duty better, and have permitted the country to
+have the benefit of the military education of these gentlemen."
+
+"I see, Captain, that you don't understand it," interrupted an officer.
+"Our Regular Officers are not all alike patriotic up to the fighting
+point; and it is a charitable provision that permits one, say,--who is
+married to a plantation of niggers, or who has other Southern sympathies
+or affinities, or who may have conscientious scruples about fighting
+against our 'Southern brethren,'--to take a snug salary in some peaceful
+department, or to go on recruiting service in quiet towns, where
+grasshoppers can be heard singing for squares, and where he is under the
+necessity of killing nothing but time, and wounding nothing but his
+country's honor and his own, if a man of that description can be said to
+possess any. In their offices, these half-hearted Lieutenants, Captains,
+and Colonels, are like satraps in their halls, unapproachable, except by
+passing bayonets that should be turned towards Richmond."
+
+"Well, if I don't understand it," resumed the Captain, "it is high time
+that Uncle Sam understood it. If these men are half-hearted, they will
+write no better than they fight, and I guess if the truth could be got
+at, they are responsible for most of the clogging in the Commissary and
+Quarter-Master Departments. But you've got me off my story. At ten
+o'clock I staved in, just as I was, my uniform shabby, and my boots
+with a tolerably fair representation of Aquia mud upon them. Passing
+from one orderly to another, I brought up at the Adjutant-General's
+office, and there I was referred to the head clerk's office, and there a
+pleasant-looking, gentlemanly Major told me that the matter would be
+certainly set straight as soon as the court-martial records were
+forwarded; that they had telegraphed for them again and again; and that
+at one time they were reported lost, and at another carried off by one
+of General Burnside's Staff Officers. As I had heard of records of the
+kind being delayed before, I intimated rather plainly what I thought of
+the matter, and told him that I wanted to see the Secretary himself. He
+smiled, and told me to take my place in the rear of an odd-looking mixed
+assemblage of persons in the hall, who were crowding towards an open
+door. It was after two o'clock and after I had stood until I felt
+devotional about the knees, when my turn brought me before the door, and
+showed me Mr. Secretary himself, standing behind a desk, tossing his
+head, now on this side and now on that, with quick jerks, like a
+short-horned bull in fly time, despatching business and the hopes of the
+parties who had it from their looks, about the same time. Right manfully
+did he stand up to his work; better than to his word perhaps, if reports
+that I have heard be true."
+
+"A pretty-faced, middle-aged lady approached his desk, and I thought
+that I could see a rather awkward effort at a smile hang around the
+upper corners of his huge, black beard, as his eye caught her features
+through his spectacles, and he received her papers. But the gruff manner
+in which he told her the next moment that he would not grant it, showed
+I was mistaken.
+
+"'But I was told, Mr. Secretary,' said the woman, in tremulous tones,
+'that my papers were all right, and that your assent was a mere
+formality. I have three other sons in the service, and this boy is
+not'----
+
+"'I don't care what you have been told,' retorted the Secretary, in a
+manner that made me so far forget my reverence that my toes suddenly
+felt as if disposed to propel something that, strange to say, had the
+semblance of humanity, and was not distant at the time. 'You had better
+leave the room, madam!' continued the same voice, somewhat gruffer and
+sterner, as the poor woman burst into tears at the sudden
+disappointment. 'You only interrupt and annoy. We are accustomed to this
+sort of thing here.'
+
+"I looked at him as he took the papers of another for examination, and
+wondered whether we were really American citizens--sovereigns as our
+politicians tell us when on the stump, and whether he was really a
+public servant. But I couldn't see it.
+
+"Now, civility is a cheap commodity, and, in my humble opinion, the
+least that can be expected of men filling public positions is that they
+should possess it in an ordinary degree.
+
+"Three o'clock came, but it was not my turn yet. In fact, the treatment
+of the lady had so disgusted me, that I was quite ready to leave when a
+servant announced that business hours were over. That evening, I found
+out to my great satisfaction that men considerably more influential than
+myself had held the Secretary to the promises he had made them, and that
+notwithstanding all his backing and filling the order for their return
+would be issued."
+
+The disappointment of the morrow was a standing topic in camp and on the
+picket line for the ensuing three weeks. The only doubt that existed
+with the Court convened for the trial of the Brigadier appeared to be
+whether the numerous charges excelled most in frivolity or malice, as a
+slight reprimand for writing an unofficial account of an engagement,--an
+offence of which several members of the Court had, by their own
+confession, repeatedly been guilty,--was the sole result of its labor.
+His restoration to command, the presentation, and the return of the
+Colonels followed in rapid succession amid the rejoicings of officers
+and men.
+
+--Amid the waste of meadow and woodland that characterized the face of
+that country, the houses of the farmers, or rather, to use the
+grandiloquent language of the inhabitants, "the mansions of the
+planters," were objects of peculiar interest. In their quaint appearance
+and general air of dilapidation, they stood as relics of the
+civilization of another age. Centuries, seemingly, of important events
+in the law of progress are crowded into years of our campaigning. The
+social status of a large country semi-civilized--whether you regard the
+intelligence of its people or the condition of its society--is being
+suddenly altered. The war accomplishes what well-designing men lacked
+nerve and ability to execute--emancipation. The blessings of a purer
+civilization will follow as naturally as sunshine follows storm.
+
+And yet here and there these old buildings would be varied by one
+evidently framed upon a Yankee model. Such was what was widely known in
+the army as "the Moncure House." On a commanding site at the edge of a
+meadow several miles in length, and that seemed from the abrupt bluffs
+that bordered it to have been once the bottom of a lake, this two-story
+weather-board frame was readily discernible. Its location made it a
+prominent point, too, upon the picket line, and it was favored above its
+fellows by daily and nightly occupancy by officers of the command. At
+this period the Regiment almost lived upon the picket line. An old
+wench, with several chalky complexioned children, whose paternal
+ancestor was understood to be under a musket of English manufacture
+perhaps, somewhere on the south side of the Rappahannock, occupied the
+kitchen of the premises. She was unceasing in reminding her military
+co-lodgers that the room used by them as head-quarters,--from the window
+of which you could take in at a glance the fine expanse of valley,
+threaded by a sparkling tributary of the Potomac,--was massa's study,
+and that massa was a preacher and had written a "right smart" lot of
+sermons in that very place. In the eyes of Dinah the room was invested
+with a peculiar sanctity. Not so with its present occupants, who could
+not learn that the minister, who was a large slaveholder, had remembered
+"those in bonds as bound with them," and who were quite content that
+artillery proclaiming "liberty throughout the land" in tones of thunder
+had driven away this vender of the divinity of the institution of
+slavery.
+
+In this room, on seats rudely improvised, for its proper furniture had
+long since disappeared, some officers not on duty were passing a
+pleasant April afternoon, when their reveries of other days and rehashes
+of old camp yarns were interrupted by the sudden advent of an officer
+who a week previously had been detailed in charge of a number of men to
+form part of an outer picket station some distance up the river. His
+face indicated news, and he was at once the centre of attraction.
+
+"Colonel!" exclaimed he, without waiting to be questioned, "two of our
+best men have been taken prisoners, and the little Dutch Doctor----"
+
+"What has happened to him?" from several at once.
+
+"Was taken prisoner and released, but had his horse stolen."
+
+His hearers breathed freer when they heard of the personal safety of the
+Doctor, and the officer continued--
+
+"And the loss of our men and his horse has all happened through the
+carelessness,--to treat it mildly,--of the exhorting Colonel. He is in
+command of the station, and yesterday afternoon the Doctor was on duty
+at his head-quarters. In came one of the black-eyed beauties that live
+in a house near the ford, about half a mile from the station, boo-hooing
+at a terrible rate--that the youngest rebel of her family was dying with
+the croup--and that no doctor was near--and all that old story. The
+Colonel was fool enough to order the Doctor to mount his horse and go
+with the woman. Well, the Doctor had got near the house, when out sprang
+two Mississippi Riflemen from the pines on either side of the road and
+levelled their pieces at him. The Doctor had to dismount, and they sent
+him back on foot. Luckily the Colonel, who, as black Charley says, has
+been praying for a star for some time past, had borrowed the Doctor's
+dress sword on the pretence that it was lighter to carry, but on the
+ground, really, that it looked more Brigadier-like, or he would have
+lost that too. I was on duty down by the river hardly two hours after it
+happened, and as there is no firing now along the picket line the
+soldiers were free-and-easy on both sides. All at once I heard laughter
+on the other side, and looking over, I saw a short, thick-set Grey-back
+riding the stolen horse near the water's edge. Presently two other
+Grey-backs sprang on either side of the horse's head, and with pieces
+levelled, in tones loud enough for us to hear, demanded his surrender.
+
+"'Why, shentlemen Rebels, mein Gott, you no take non compatants, me
+surgeon,' said the Grey-back on the horse, in equally loud voice.
+
+"'No, d--n you! Dismount! We don't want you. You can be of more service
+to the Confederate cause where you are. But we must have the nag.'
+
+"'Mine private property,' he replied, as he dismounted.
+
+"'In a horn,' said one of the Grey-backs, pointing to the U. S. on the
+shoulder of the beast. 'That your private mark, eh?'
+
+"'You no shentlemen. By G--t, no honor,' retorted the Grey-back who
+personated the Doctor, as he swelled himself and strutted about on the
+sand in such a high style of indignation as to draw roars of laughter
+from both sides of the river.
+
+"That rather paid us with interest for the way we sold them the day
+before. You know they have been crazy after our dailies ever since the
+strict general order preventing the exchange of the daily papers between
+pickets. Well, that dare-devil of a law student, Tom, determined to have
+some fun with them. So when they again, as they often had before, came
+to the river with hands full of Richmond papers, proposing exchange, Tom
+flourished a paper also. That was the old signal, and forthwith a
+raw-boned Alabamian stripped and commenced wading toward a rock that
+jutted up in the middle of the river. Tom stripped also, and met him at
+the rock. Mum was the word between them, and each turned for his own
+shore, the Grey-back with Tom's paper, and Tom with several of the
+latest Richmond prints. A crowd of Rebel officers met their messenger at
+the water's edge and received the paper. The one who opened it, bent
+nearly double with laughter, and the rest rapidly followed as their eyes
+lit on the stars and stripes printed in glowing colors on the first page
+of the little religious paper that our Chaplains distribute so freely in
+camp, called 'The Christian Banner.' One old officer, apparently of
+higher rank than the rest, cursed it as he went up the bank as a 'd----d
+Yankee sell,--' which did not in the least lessen our enjoyment of Tom's
+success.
+
+"But with our two men and the Doctor's horse they have squared accounts
+with us since, and all through the fault of the Colonel."
+
+In response to inquiries as to how, when, and where, the officer
+continued--
+
+"There was a narrow strip of open land between a belt of woods and the
+river. The Colonel posted our two men on the inside of the woods, where
+they had no open view towards the enemy at all. That rainy night this
+week the Rebs came over in boats and gobbled them up. The Colonel
+attributed their loss to their own neglect, and next morning their place
+was supplied by four old soldiers, as he called them, from his own
+Regiment. That same day at noon, in broad daylight, they were taken."
+
+"And if he were not a firm friend at Division Head-quarters there would
+be a dismissal from the service for cause," said an officer of the
+crowd.
+
+"Our Corps Commander is too much of a soldier to let it go by," resumed
+the officer, "if our Brigadier can force it through Division
+Head-quarters, and bring it to his notice."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The order that introduced into the service the novelty of carrying eight
+days' rations on a march, had been discussed for some time in the
+Regiment. That night the Regiment was withdrawn from the picket line,
+and preparations were forthwith made for a practical illustration of the
+order on the morrow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+_The Army again on the Move--Pack Mules and Wagon Trains--A Negro
+Prophetess--The Wilderness--Hooped Skirts and Black Jack--The Five Days'
+Fight at Chancellorsville--Terrible Death of an Aged Slave--A
+Pigeon-hole General's "Power in Reserve."_
+
+
+It was some weeks after a Rebel Picket, opposite Falmouth, had surprised
+one of our own, who had not as yet heard of the change in the usual
+three days' provender for a march, by asking him across the river
+"whether his eight days' rations were mouldy yet?" that the army
+actually commenced its movement. While awaiting the word to fall in,
+this mass of humanity literally loaded with army bread and ammunition
+resembled, save in uniformity, those unfortunate beings burdened with
+bundles of woe, so strikingly portrayed in the Vision of Mirza. To the
+credit of the men, it must be stated, however, that the greatest
+good-humor prevailed in this effort to render the army self-sustaining
+in a country that could not sustain itself.
+
+Another novel feature in the movement was the long strings of pack
+mules, heavily freighted with ammunition, which were led in the rear of
+the different Brigades. Wagon trains were thereby dispensed with, and
+the mobility of the army greatly increased. Stringent orders were
+issued also as to the reduction of baggage, and dispensing with camp
+equipage and cooking utensils.
+
+In lively ranks, although each man was freighted with the prescribed
+eight days' provender and sixty rounds of ball cartridge, our Division,
+of almost 9,000 men, moved, followed by two ambulances to pick up those
+who might fall by the way, in the rear of which were five additional
+ambulances for the especial use of Division Head-quarters. For a General
+of whom reporters had said that "he was most at home in the field," the
+supply of ambulances, full of creature comforts, was unusually heavy. On
+we moved over the familiar ground of the Warrenton Pike, in common with
+several other Army Corps in a grand march; our Division, with its two
+ambulances; our General with his five,--and our proportionate number of
+pack horses and mules. The obstinacy of the latter animal was sorely
+punished by the apparent effort during that march to teach it perpetual
+motion. Halt the Division did statedly, but there was no rest for the
+poor mule. Experience had taught its driver that the beast would take
+advantage of the halt to lie down, and when once down no amount of
+tugging and swearing and clubbing could induce it to rise. Hence, while
+the command would enjoy their stated halts by the wayside, these strings
+of mules would be led or driven in continuous circles of steady toil.
+Despite the vigilance of their drivers, a mule would occasionally drop,
+and his companions speedily follow, to stand a siege of kicks, cuffs,
+and bayonet pricks, and to be reduced, or what would be more appropriate
+in their case, raised at length by the application of a mud plaster to
+the nostrils, which would bring the beast up in an effort to breathe
+freely; from which may arise the slang phrase of "bringing it up a
+snorting."
+
+Onward they marched, those wearers of the cross, the square, the circle,
+the crescent, the star, the lozenge, and the tripod; emblemed
+representatives of the interests of a common humanity in the triumphal
+march that the world is witness to, of the progress of Universal
+Emancipation. Landed aristocracies of the Old World may avow their
+affinity to the aristocracy of human flesh and blood that has so long
+cursed the New; but now that the suicidal hand of the latter has caused
+the forfeit of its existence, we are the centre of the hopes, fears, and
+prayers of the universal brotherhood of man in the effort to blot out
+for ever the only foul spot upon our national escutcheon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"De Lor bress ye. I know yez all. Yez, Uncle Samuel's children. Long
+looked for come at las," said an old wench on the second day of our
+march, enthusiastically to the advanced ranks of our Division, as they
+wound around the hill in sight of Mt. Holly Church, on the main road to
+Kelly's Ford, curtesying and gesturing all the while with her right
+hand, as if offering welcome, while with her left she steadied on her
+head the cast-away cover of a Dutch oven. A pair of half-worn army shoes
+covered her feet, and the folds of her tow gown were compressed about
+the waist, beneath a black leathern belt, the brass plate of which
+bearing the letters "U. S.," wore a conspicuous polish.
+
+"Massa over yonder," continued she, in response to a query from the
+ranks, pointing as she spoke across the river. "Hope you cotch him.
+Golly he'um slyer than a possum in a hen-roost."
+
+The anxiety of the wench for the capture of her master, and her
+statement of a pre-knowledge of the visit of the troops, were by no
+means exceptional. Rarely indeed, in the history of the Rebellion, has
+devotion on the part of the slave to the interest of the master been
+discovered. The vaunted fealty that would make his cause their own,
+lacks practical illustration. An attempt to arm them will save recruits
+and arms to Uncle Sam. Nat Turner's insurrection developed their strong
+faith in a day of freedom. Their wildest dreams of fancy could not have
+pictured a more auspicious prelude to the realization of that faith than
+the outbreak of the Rebellion. Well might
+
+          "Massa tink it day ob doom,
+          But we ob Jubilee."
+
+The face of the country at this point was adorned by the most beautiful
+variety of hill and dale. Compared with the region about Aquia, it had
+been but little touched by the ravages of war. When it shall have been
+wholly reclaimed under a banner, then to be emphatically "the Banner of
+the Free," an inviting door will open to enterprising business.
+
+A few miles further on we rested on our arms upon the summit of a ridge
+overlooking that portion of the Upper Rappahannock known as Kelly's
+Ford. The brilliant cavalry engagement of a few weeks previously, that
+occurred upon the level ground in full view above the Ford, invested it
+with peculiar interest. Who ever saw a dead cavalryman? was a question
+that had been for a long time uttered as a standing joke. Hooker's
+advent to command was attended by a sharp and stirring order that
+speedily brought this arm of the service to a proper sense of duty.
+Among the first fruits of the order was this creditable fight. While no
+excuse can be given for the slovenly and ungainly riding, rusty sabres,
+and dirty accoutrements, raw-boned and uncurried horses that had too
+often made many of our cavalry regiments appear like a body of Sancho
+Panzas thrown loosely together; it would still be exceedingly unfair to
+have required as much of them as of the educated horsemen and superior
+horseflesh that gave the Rebel cavalry their efficiency in the early
+stages of the war. Since then the scales have turned. Frequent
+successful raids and resistless charges have given the courage, skill,
+and dash of our Gregg, Buford, Kilpatrick, Grierson, and others that
+might be named, honorable mention at every loyal fireside.
+
+While on the top of this ridge, Rush's regiment of lancers, with lances
+in rest and pennons gaily fluttering beneath the spear heads, cantered
+past the regiment. Their strange equipment gave an oriental appearance
+to the columns moving toward the ford. With straining eyes we followed
+their movement up the river and junction with the cavalry then crossing
+at a ford above the pontoons. The Regiment had been almost continually
+broken up for detached service, at different head-quarters, or for the
+purpose of halting stragglers. With many of the men, their service
+appeared like their equipment, ornamental rather than useful, and in
+connexion with their foraging reputation, won for them the expressive
+designation of "Pig Stickers."
+
+Darkness was just setting in when our turn came upon the pontoon bridge,
+and it was quite dark when we prepared ourselves, in a pelting rain, for
+rest for the night, as we thought, in a meadow half a mile distant from
+the road. At midnight, in mud and rain, we resumed the march, in convoy
+of a pontoon train, and over a by-road which from the manner its
+primitive rock was revealed, must have been unused for years. The
+streams forded during that night of sleepless toil, the enjoined
+silence, broken only by the sloppy shuffle of shoes half filled with
+water, and the creaking wagons, the provoking halts that would tempt the
+eyes to a slumber that would be broken immediately by the resumption of
+the forward movement, have left ineffaceable memories. A somewhat
+pedantic order of "Accelerate the speed of your command, Colonel," given
+by our General of Division, as the head of the Regiment neared his
+presence towards morning, reminded us of the "long and rapid march" that
+the Commander-in-Chief intended the army to make.
+
+On the last day of April we crossed the Rapidan, fording its breast-deep
+current, considered too strong for the pontoons, and wondering,
+especially as the cannonading of the evening previous indicated
+resistance ahead, that our advance was not at this point impeded.
+Artillery planted upon the circling hills of the opposite shore would
+have made the passage, if even practicable, perilous to the last degree.
+As it was, however, _in puris naturalibus_, with cartridge-box on the
+musket barrel, and the musket on the shoulder, clothing in many
+instances bundled upon the head, the troops made the passage. The whys
+and the wherefores of no opposition--the confidence of Old Joe having
+stolen a march upon Johnny Reb--and the usual surmises of the
+morrow--increased in this instance by our having surprised and captured
+some Rebel pickets when just about halting, constituted ample capital
+for conversation during our night's rest in a pine grove two miles south
+of the ford.
+
+With the Army of the Potomac the merry month of May had a lively
+opening. After a march from early dawn, we found our Division, about the
+middle of the forenoon, massed in a thick wood in the rear of a large
+and imposing brick building, which, with one or two buildings of minor
+importance, constituted what was designated upon our pocket maps as the
+town of Chancellorsville. The region of country was most appropriately
+styled "The Wilderness." A wilderness indeed, of tall oaks, and a dense
+undergrowth known as "black-jack." There were but few open places or
+improved spots. In one of the largest of these, at a point where two
+prominent roads forked, stood the large building above mentioned. The
+day previous General Lee and his staff had been hospitably entertained
+within its walls. Now our fine-looking Commander and his gay and gallant
+staff were busily engaged in its lower rooms, while the ladies of the
+house of Secesh sympathies kept themselves closely in the upper
+story,--their curiosity tempting them however, to occasional peeps from
+half-opened shutters at the blue coats below.
+
+At twelve, precisely, just as we had taken a position in the open ground
+abreast of the house, the sharp report of a rifled piece, followed
+quickly by the fainter explosion of a shell, was heard upon our left.
+Another and another succeeded,--indicating that the wood was being
+shelled preparatory to an advance in that direction. Slowly we filed to
+the left, proceeding by a narrow winding wood-road until the head of our
+column had almost reached the river. A sudden order at this stage for
+the right about created considerable surprise, which ceased shortly
+after, as the sharp rattle of musketry, now as if picket firing, and now
+swelling into a volleyed roar, told us of a Rebel movement upon our
+flank. That our advance upon them in that direction had been quite
+unexpected, was apparent from their hastily abandoned camp grounds; rows
+of tents left standing, but slit from ridge-pole to pins; abandoned
+caissons and ammunition; and the tubs in which their rations of flour
+were kneaded, with undried dough in the corners. That they had rallied
+to regain their lost ground, was also apparent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What's the matter, Dinah?" shouted one of our boys to an active young
+wench, who was wending her way from the direction of the firing as
+rapidly as the frequent contact of an extensive hooped skirt with the
+undergrowth would allow.
+
+"Dunno zackly, massa! Don't like de racket at all down yonder," she
+replied, making at the same time vigorous efforts to release the hold
+some bushes appeared to have upon her, upon either side. A sudden roar
+of artillery, apparently nearer by, brought matters to a crisis, and
+screaming "Oh, Lor," she loosened her clothing, and sprang out of the
+skirt with a celerity that showed the perfection of muscular
+development, and won shouts of applause from the ranks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sharp engagement was in progress upon a lower and almost parallel
+road. The roar of cannon, the explosion of shells, the rattle of
+musketry,--now ragged as if from detached squads,--and now volleyed as
+from full ranks, mingled with the shrill cheers or rather demoniac yells
+of the Rebels, pealing their banner cry of "Hell," in their successive
+charges, and the gruff hoarse shouts of our troops, as they duly
+repulsed them, formed a most martial accompaniment to our march. The
+unity of sound of well executed volleys, told us how Sykes's Regulars
+attacked, whilst marching by the flank, halted at the word, faced to the
+left with the precision of an ordinary drill, and delivered their fire
+with murderous exactness.
+
+A few stray bullets flying in the direction of a temporized corral of
+pack-horses in a corner of the wood in the rear of the brick house,
+frightened their cowardly drivers, who commenced a stampede to the rear;
+and as we emerged from the road to our old position, the beasts were
+rapidly divesting themselves of their packs, in their progress through
+the undergrowth. In conjunction with this the frequent and fierce
+charges of the Rebel massed columns, favored by the smoke of the burning
+woods, made a panic imminent among the troops upon the lower road. The
+quick eye of old Joe saw the danger in a moment, and rushing from the
+house and springing upon his horse, he dashed down that road unattended,
+his manly form the mark of many a rebel rifle. Shouts of applause
+greeted him, and the continuous rattle of our musketry told us of the
+regained confidence of the men, and the renewed steadiness of our line.
+
+It was now four in the afternoon--the usual time with the Rebels for the
+execution of their favorite movement--charging in massed columns. On
+they came in their successive charges, howling like fiends, and with a
+courage that would have adorned an honorable cause. The steady musketry,
+but above all the terrific showers of canister from cannon that
+thundered in doublets from right to left along the line of our
+batteries, could not be withstood, and they fell back in confusion. The
+nature of the ground did not permit an advance of our forces, and we
+were compelled to rest content with their repulse. An hour later our
+Division moved by still another road to the left, to a ridge in the
+neighborhood of Banks's Ford. Upon its wooded summit, with no sound to
+break in upon us save the screaming of whip-poor-wills, which the boys
+with ready augury construed to mean "whip-'em-well," and picket firing,
+that would occasionally appear to run along the line, we passed a
+comfortable night.
+
+Breastworks were the order of the day following, and at noon we were
+enjoying our coffee in a cleared space, behind a ridge of logs and limbs
+that fronted our entire Division, and which we would have been content
+to hold against any attacking force. Cannonading continued at intervals,
+with occasional musketry firing. As it was considerably to our right, we
+were not disturbed in our enjoyment of supplies of provisions obtained
+from vacated Rebel houses in the neighborhood. Our amusement was greatly
+contributed to, by the sight of some of the men dressed in odd clothing
+of a by-gone fashionable age. But perhaps the most interesting object
+was a Text-book upon the Divinity of Slavery, written by a Reverend
+Doctor Smith, for the use of schools; its marked lessons and dirty
+dog-ears shewing that it had troubled the brains and thumbs of youthful
+Rebels. Instilled into infant minds, and preached from their pulpits, we
+need not wonder that they, with the heartless metaphysics of northern
+sympathy, should consider slavery "an incalculable blessing," and should
+now be in arms to vindicate their treason, its legitimate offspring.
+
+Cannonading had been frequent during the day; its heavy booming at times
+varied by the light rattle of the rifle. From four until eleven P. M. it
+was a continuous roar, save about an hour's intermission between five
+and six. At first sounding sullenly away to the right, then gradually
+nearing, until at nightfall musketry and artillery appeared to volley
+spitefully almost upon our Division limits. It was apparent that our
+line had been broken, and apprehending the worst we anxiously stood at
+arms and awaited the onward. Nearer and nearer the howling devils came;
+louder and louder grew the sounds of conflict. The fiercest of fights
+was raging evidently in the very centre of the ground chosen as our
+stronghold. If ever the Army of the Potomac was to be demoralized by the
+shock of battle, that was the time. But the feeling was not one of fear
+with our citizen soldiery--the noblest type of manhood--rather of
+eagerness for the troops in reserve to be called into the contest. Just
+before six we heard an honest shout, as the boys would call the cheers
+of their comrades. It grew fainter; the firing became more
+distant--slackened and ceased at six, to be resumed again at seven, upon
+another and more remote line of attack.
+
+The terrible distinctness of this alternate howling and cheering--as
+perceptible to the ear during the thunders of the fight, as the silver
+lining that not unfrequently fringes the heavily-charged cloud is to the
+eye,--is a striking illustration of the power of the human voice. We
+were to have another, however, and that of but a single voice, which
+from the agony of soul thrown into it, and its almost supernatural
+surroundings, must eternally echo in memory.
+
+About three hundred yards distant from the left of our Brigade line, in
+an open field, on elevated ground, stood a large and comfortable
+looking farm-house. In the morning it had been occupied; but as its
+inmates saw our skirmishers prostrating themselves on the one side in
+double lines that ran parallel to our breastworks, and the Rebel advance
+at the same time attain the edge of the wood upon the opposite
+side,--and the skirmishing that occasionally occurred along the lines
+giving promise of a fight that might centre upon their premises,--they
+packed up a few valuables and left for a place of safety. But not all.
+We read of noble Romans offering their lives in defence of faithful
+slaves. That species of self-sacrifice is a stranger to our Southern
+chivalry. In the garret of the building, upon some rags, lay an old
+woman, who had been crippled from injuries received by being scalded
+some months before, and had thus closed a term of faithful service which
+ran over fifty years, of the life of her present master and of that of
+his father before him. Worn out, and useless for further toil, she had
+been placed in the garret with other household rubbish. Her poor body
+crippled,--but a casket, nevertheless, of an immortal soul,--was not one
+of the valuables taken by the family upon their departure. As the
+thunders of the thickening fight broke in upon her loneliness, her cries
+upon the God of battles, alone powerful to save, could be heard with
+great distinctness. Isolated and under the fire of either line, there
+was no room for human relief. Her strength of voice appeared to grow
+with the increasing darkness, and above the continuous thunder of the
+cannon were the cries--"God Almighty, help me!" "Lord, save me!" "Have
+mercy on me!" shrieked and groaned in all the varied tones of mortal
+agony. Long after the firing had ceased, in fact until we moved at
+early dawn, our men behind the works and in the rifle pits in front
+could hear with greater or less distinctness, as if a death wail coming
+up from the carnage of the field, the piteous plaints of that
+terror-stricken soul. Rumor has it, that before the building was fired
+by a shell in the middle of the following forenoon, her spirit had taken
+its flight; but whether or not, it could not mitigate the retributive
+justice to be measured out by that God over us all to whom vengeance
+belongs, upon the heads of the ingrates who had left her to her fate.
+
+We moved, as we have before mentioned, at early dawn on one of those
+fair, bright Sabbath days so happily spoken of by "good old George
+Herbert;" marching by the right flank along our works, with a hurried
+step. It was between five and six when we neared the front,--passing on
+our way out, hosts of stragglers and disorganized regiments of the
+Eleventh Corps. They had suffered badly--some said, behaved badly--and
+some said, posted in such a way that they could not but behave badly.
+The merits of the case must remain for decisive history. Conceding
+equally good generalship to both, it is not amiss to say, that what
+happened under Howard might not have happened under Sigel. The desultory
+firing along our changed front showed too plainly the ground we had lost
+the day before. In the wood, alongside of the road fronting the right
+centre of our line, our Regiment lay at arms,--listening to awfully
+exaggerated stories from stragglers,--watching the posting of artillery
+in our immediate front, the entry of Brigades into the wood upon our
+left, and their exit under skilful artillery practice,--and now and then
+dodging at the sound of the stray shells sent as return compliments from
+Rebel batteries.
+
+"Good-bye, Colonel; these brass-bull pups will roar bloody murder at
+Johnny Reb to-day," said a fine-looking, whole-souled Lieutenant, in
+command of an Ohio battery, pointing to his pieces with pride, as he
+hurried by at a trot, to relieve a battery on our left centre.
+
+Poor fellow! How blind we are to futurity! His pieces were scarcely in
+position before a shell struck the caisson at which he was adjusting
+fuses, and his head, picked up at the distance of a hundred yards, was
+all that remained unshattered of his manly figure, after the explosion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Files of wounded upon foot, full ambulances, and stretchers laden with
+the more serious cases, passed us here.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I am done for, fellows," said a slightly built, pale-faced sergeant,
+resting upon his elbow, and pointing to his shattered side, as he was
+carried by on a stretcher; "but stick to the old flag; it is bound to
+win."
+
+His passage along the line was greeted with cheers, that must have
+sounded gratefully to ears fast closing to earthly sounds.
+
+But why individualize? The heroism that may be told of such a day, is
+but a drop compared with the thousand untold currents of unselfish
+patriotism and high resolve that well up in the bosoms of our Union
+soldiers. Not that daring deeds are not performed by Rebel ranks, but--
+
+          "True fortitude is seen in great exploits,
+          That justice warrants, and that wisdom guides;
+          All else is towering frenzy and distraction."
+
+About nine in the forenoon, to the sound of lively musketry on our left,
+our Brigade left in front, crossed the open space in front of the wood,
+and in the rear of a white plastered farm-house. A narrow wood-road led
+us into the wood, and filing to the left we connected with troops
+already in line of battle. The position was hardly taken before the zip!
+zip!! zip!!! of Minie balls informed us that we were objects of especial
+interest to Rebel sharpshooters. In another minute flashes of flame and
+puffs of smoke, that appeared to rise from among the dead foliage of the
+wood--so closely did their Butternut clothing resemble leaves--revealed
+a strong, well-formed, but prostrate Rebel line. The firing now became
+general upon both sides. Fortunately our position was such that they
+overshot us. Our men continued to aim low, and delivered an effective
+fire. Three times they tried to rise preparatory to the charge, and were
+as often thrown into confusion, and forced again upon the ground. For
+nearly two long hours the rattling of musketry was incessant. Finally,
+the Rebels made the discovery that the supply of ammunition was
+exhausted upon the right, and the right itself unsupported. It, of
+course, was the point to mass upon, and on they came in solid columns to
+the charge, completely outflanking our right.
+
+To hold the ground with our formation was simply impossible. The order
+to retire was given; and facing by the rear rank--the Regiments
+preserving their ranks as best they could in that thicket of black-jack,
+and carrying their wounded,--among them our Major, shot through the
+chest--made their way to the open space in rear of the wood. The colors
+of our regiment were seized,--but the first Rebel hand upon them relaxed
+from a death shot,--another was taken with the Regiment,--and the flag
+brought off in triumph. So completely had they gained our flank that
+our ranks became mixed with theirs, and nothing but the opportune fire
+of our batteries prevented their taking away a Field Officer, who twice
+escaped from their hands.
+
+As our Brigade re-formed in the rear of the batteries, treble charges of
+canister swept the woods of the Rebel ranks. We had suffered heavily,
+but nothing in comparison to the destruction now visited upon the
+Rebels. To complete the horrors of the day, the wood was suddenly fired,
+evidently to cover their retreat, and the fire swept to the open space,
+enveloping in flame and smoke the dead and wounded of both sides; and
+all this at the very time when throughout the length and breadth of this
+Christian land, thousands of churches were resonant with the words of
+the Gospel of Peace. But "Woe be unto those by whom offences come."
+"They have taken the sword, and must perish by the sword."
+
+So completely were the Rebels masters of the only available fighting
+ground that no further effort was made to advance our lines, and the
+army stood strictly upon the defensive. The open space, in which stood
+the Chancellorsville mansion, at this time a mass of smoking ruins, was
+in their possession. At arms behind the breastworks we awaited the
+onset; but although there was occasional firing, no general attack was
+made during the remainder of the day. With the thanks of our Corps
+Commander publicly given for services during the fight, our Brigade
+rested at night, speculating upon which side the heavy firing told then
+heard in the vicinity of Fredericksburg.
+
+During the next day we were stationed as a Reserve upon the right, and
+called to arms frequently during the day and night, when the Rebels
+with their unearthly yells would tempt our artillery by charging upon
+the works. On the day after we were moved to support the centre, and
+kept continually at arms. In the afternoon a violent thunderstorm
+raged--the dread artillery of Heaven teaching us humility by its
+striking contrast to the counterfeit thunder of our cannon. Rain
+generally follows heavy cannonading. All that afternoon and the greater
+part of the night it fell in torrents. Cannonading in the direction of
+Fredericksburg had ceased during the day. Sedgwick's disastrous movement
+was not generally known,--but our wounded had all been sent off;--our
+few wagon trains and our pack-horses had crossed,--and notwithstanding
+the show of fight kept up in front, enough was seen to indicate that the
+army was about to recross the Rappahannock.
+
+Favored by the darkness, battery after battery was quietly withdrawn,
+their respective Army Corps accompanying in Regiments of two abreast.
+
+The movement was in painful contrast to the spirited order that gave
+such a merry May-day to our hope upon the first of the month. In blouses
+that smoked that wet night around camp fires kept up for the purpose of
+misleading the enemy, our men stood discussing the orders, and the
+counter-orders, and what had happened, and what might happen, from the
+step. Hooker had credit for the successful execution of his part of the
+programme. What was wrong below was conjecture then, and does not yet
+appear to be certainly understood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Where is Old Pigey?" said one of a group of officers, suddenly turning
+to a comrade, as they stood about one of their camp fires. "He has not
+been near our Brigade during the day."
+
+"No! nor near the other, except to damn it in such a style as to draw
+down the rebuke of a superior officer," replied the man addressed.
+"Follow me, if you desire to see how a 'cool, courageous man of
+science,' one, whose face, as the Reporters say of him, 'indicates
+tremendous power in reserve,' meets this crisis."
+
+The two retired, and on a camp stool, with cloak wrapped closely about
+him, in front of a fire whose bright blaze gave him enormous proportions
+upon the dark background of pines, surrounded by his Staff, his hat more
+pinched up and askew than usual, and receiving frequent consolation from
+a long, black bottle, evidently his power in reserve upon this occasion,
+the General was discovered in a pensive mood.
+
+"Do you know," continued the officer, "that he reports, as a reason for
+his absence to-day, that he did not consider it prudent to be near our
+Brigade during the loading and firing exercise."
+
+"The torturing of a guilty conscience," was the reply. "Our men, as true
+soldiers, know but one enemy in the field."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At length, at two in the morning of the 6th of May, we cautiously
+commenced our movement to the river. The dawn of a rainy day saw us
+formed in line of battle, supporting artillery planted to protect the
+crossing. About eight our turn came upon the swollen stream. The rain
+pelted piteously as we ascended the steep slope of the opposite bank,
+and after a day's march over roads resembling rivers of mud, we slept
+away our sorrows under wet blankets, in the comfortable huts of our old
+camp ground.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+_The Pigeon-hole General and his Adjutant under Charges--The Exhorting
+Colonels Adieu to the Sunday Fight at Chancellorsville; Reasons
+thereof--Speech of the Dutch Doctor in Reply to a Peace-Offering from
+the Chaplain--The Irish Corporal stumping for Freedom--Black Charlie's
+Compliments to his Master--Western Virginia at the Head of a Black
+Regiment._
+
+
+                                   "HEAD-QUARTERS, ---- DIVISION.
+                                       "---- ARMY CORPS, _7th May, 1863_.
+
+                         "General Orders, No. 22.
+
+     "The term of service of six of the eight Regiments forming my
+     Division is about to expire. In the midst of the pressing duties of
+     an active Campaign there is but little time for leave-taking, yet I
+     cannot part from the brave officers and men of my command without
+     expressing to them the satisfaction and pride I have felt at their
+     conduct, from the time when I assumed command, as they marched
+     through Washington, in September last, to join the Army of the
+     Potomac, then about to meet the Enemy, up to the present eventful
+     period.
+
+     "The cheerfulness with which they have borne the unaccustomed
+     fatigues and hardships which it is the lot of the soldier to
+     endure; their zealous efforts to learn the multifarious duties of
+     the soldier; the high spirit they have exhibited when called on to
+     make long and painful marches to meet the enemy, and their bravery
+     in the field of battle have won my regard and affection. I shall
+     part from them with deep regret, and wish them, as the time of each
+     regiment expires, a happy return to their families and friends.
+
+                                      "---- ----,
+                                   "Brig. Gen'l Com'g Division."
+
+However profound the _regret_ of the General at parting, he must, from
+the phraseology of the above Order, have been conscious, that in his own
+conduct was to be found the reason that such regret was not in the least
+reciprocated by his command. So completely had he aliened the affections
+of officers and men that the ordinary salute in recognition of his rank
+was given grudgingly, if at all. When there is no gold in the character,
+men are not backward in proclaiming that they consider
+
+          "The rank is but the guinea's stamp."
+
+As their campaign approached its close, he added studied insult to long
+continued injury. His inconsistency, and willingness to make use of a
+quibble for the accomplishment of tyrannical purposes were shown by his
+non-approval of the requisition for dress coats, when it was handed in
+by the officer in command of the Regiment, a short time after the
+removal of the Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel for refusing to obey the
+order requiring it. Charges had been preferred against his
+Adjutant-General for repeated instances of "Drunkenness upon Duty,"
+"Disgraceful Conduct," and "Conduct unbecoming an Officer and a
+Gentleman." They were returned to the Brigadier, through whom they had
+been submitted, with an insulting note, in which the General took
+occasion to state, by way of pre-judgment, that the charges were
+malicious and false, notwithstanding the scores of names appended as
+witnesses;--and that no _Volunteer Captain_ had a right to prefer
+charges against one of his Staff; and that it was the duty of the
+Brigadier to discountenance any charges of the kind. They were again
+forwarded, with the statement of the Brigadier, that the charges were
+eminently proper, and that he himself would prefer them, should
+objection be taken to the rank of the officer whose signature was
+attached. But pigeon-holing was a favorite smothering process at
+Division Head-Quarters, and the drunken and disgraceful conduct of the
+Adjutant-General remains unpunished.
+
+Charges supported by a large array of reputable witnesses, ranking from
+Brigadier to Privates, were preferred against the General himself, for
+"Drunkenness," "Un-officerlike conduct," "Conduct tending to mutiny,"
+and the utterance of the following treasonable and disloyal
+sentiments:--
+
+     "That he wished some one would ask the army to follow General
+     McClellan to Washington, and hurl the whole d----d pack into the
+     Potomac, and place General McClellan at the head of the
+     Government,--that the removal of the said General McClellan was a
+     political move to kill the said General; and that the army had
+     better be taken to Washington, and turned over to Lincoln."
+
+The charges and specifications, of one of the latter of which the above
+is an extract, alleged that the offence was committed at Camp near
+Warrenton, about the time of McClellan's removal. Whether they too have
+been pigeon-holed at Division Head-Quarters is not known. Attention to
+their merit was promised by superior officers. The patriotic sacrifices
+of our citizen soldiery are surely worthy of an unceasing and unsparing
+effort to procure loyal, temperate, and capable commanders. A timely
+trial, besides affording a salutary example, might have done much in
+preventing the disgraceful Rebel escape at Williamsport, which alone
+dims the glory of Gettysburg.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last that was seen of the exhorting Colonel and his Adjutant, was
+their sudden exit from the wood at Chancellorsville, in an early stage
+of Sunday's fight,--the one with a slight wound, and the other with a
+headache caused by the cannonading, as alleged. A performance which has
+not, thus far, brought the coveted star.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I propose the health of the Assistant Surgeon," said the Chaplain, at a
+supper given by the Sutler on the day of our muster out, and the
+occasion of the presentation of a costly sword to our worthy
+Colonel,--proposing thereby to make an advance towards healing their
+differences. The Doctor could not escape; and winking, as usual with him
+during excitement, he rose to his feet.
+
+"My ver goot kind friend, the English language he am a shtranger to me.
+No shpeak so goot as Shaplain, but py tam," and the Doctor struck the
+table until the plates rattled--"was py the Shaplain over six month,
+and my opinion is, Shaplains, women, and whiskey not goot for soldiers."
+
+The Doctor's look and tones were irresistibly ludicrous, and a roar of
+laughter at the expense of the Chaplain ran round the board.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Regiment returned with ranks sadly thinned. Many of the survivors;
+among them, most of the Field and Staff, the poetical and the preacher
+Lieutenants, and privates Tom and Harry,--have re-entered service. The
+two latter now carry swords.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bill the cook is the presiding genius of a restaurant; his face, in the
+way of reminding one of hot stews and pepper-pot, his best sign.
+Charlie, his assistant, was last noticed in a photographic establishment
+in Philadelphia; inclosing a full length card portrait of himself in
+uniform, as a Corporal in a Black Regiment, for the benefit of his
+master's family in Dixie.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The little Irish Corporal was heard to tell a brawling peace man,--as he
+menaced with the stump of an arm,--lost at Chancellorsville--in a saloon
+a short time after his return, to "hould his tongue; that the boys who
+had lost limbs in defence of the country were the chappies to stump for
+freedom, and that they would keep down all fires in the rear, while our
+brave boys are fighting in front."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A late mail brings the news that our Western Virginia Captain is soon to
+take the field at the head of a Black Regiment, and that the happiest
+results are anticipated from his enforcement of military law and
+tactics, as learned by him under "Old Rosy," in Western Virginia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus we go on. Necessity hastens the progress of civilization and
+freedom. Desolating war--protracted by mistaken leniency--has educated
+the nation to a proper sense of the treason, and nerved it to the
+determination to crush it by all possible means and at every hazard. The
+man who has heretofore objected to Negro enlistments, acquiesces when
+his own name appears upon the list of the Enrolling Officer. The day
+that saw the change in the miserable, not to say treasonable, policy of
+alienating the only real friends we have had in the South, and their
+successful employment as soldiers, stands first in the decline of the
+Rebellion. Its suppression is fixed, and is to be measured by the vigor
+with which we press the war.
+
+          "Vengeance is secure to him
+          Who doth arm himself with right."
+
+
+                                   THE END.
+
+
+
+
+NEW BOOKS
+
+And New Editions Recently Issued by
+
+CARLETON, PUBLISHER,
+
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+
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+
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+LES MISERABLES.--The only unabridged English translation of "the
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+ RUTLEDGE.--A very powerful Novel.        12mo. cl. bound, $1.50
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+ DOESTICKS; WHAT HE SAYS.--With comic illusts. 12m. cl., $1.50
+ PLURIBUSTAH.--                   do.             do.    $1.50
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+ THE ALCHEMIST.--                   do.                  do.    $1.00
+ EUGENIE GRANDET.--                 do.                  do.    $1.00
+
+=D. D. Home (or Hume).=
+
+INCIDENTS IN MY LIFE.--By the celebrated spirit medium;
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+
+=Thomas Bailey Aldrich.=
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+ BABIE BELL, AND OTHER POEMS.--   Blue and gold binding, $1.00
+ OUT OF HIS head.--An eccentric romance.  12mo. cl.,     $1.00
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+=Adam Gurowski.=
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+DIARY.--During the years 1861 to '63, in Washington. Two
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+
+=Edmund C. Stedman.=
+
+ ALICE OF MONMOUTH.--       12mo., tinted paper, cloth, $1.00
+ LYRICS AND IDYLS.--                                    75 cts.
+ THE PRINCE'S BALL.--With humorous illustrations.       50 cts.
+
+=Alexander Von Humboldt.=
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+LIFE AND TRAVELS.--With an introduction by Bayard Taylor.
+A book for every library. 12mo. cloth, $1.50
+
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+
+ THE KING'S BELL.--12mo. cloth bound, tinted paper,   75 cts.
+ THE MORGESONS.--A novel.  By Mrs. R. H. Stoddard.    $1.00
+
+=M. T. Walworth.=
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+LULU.--A novel of life in Washington. 12mo. cloth, $1.25
+
+=Hugh Miller.=
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+ TWENTY YEARS AROUND THE WORLD. J. G. Vassar.           8vo.    $3.50
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+ FORT LAFAYETTE.--By Benjamin Wood.                12mo. cloth, $1.00
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+ TRANSITION.--Edited by Rev. H. S. Carpenter.        12mo. cl., $1.00
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+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+The author, "A Citizen-Soldier", is pseudonym for William H. Armstrong.
+"Old Pigey" is believed to be based on General Arthur A. Humphreys.
+
+This text has been edited to standardize representation of censored
+words. Additionally, hyphens have been added to some phrases, to provide
+consistency.
+
+"=" has been used in this text edition of the book to indicate where
+the original book used bold fonts; + has been used to indicate a font
+change.
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+
+
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+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals, by
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