Tuesday. Fixed our tent up good. Friday. Had mustering in for our pay. Saturday. Had marching orders and went back to Fairfax Seminary where we got three days rations and then took the road for Centreville. Found it impossible to keep up with the Reg. so fell out of the ranks, and about 9 o'clock went out in a field and went to sleep.

This was a humiliation. It was my first serious march, with all I owned in the world on my back. I had boasted so much and so often of the soldier I was to be that it was shameful to collapse. I had been tired on the little tramps the regiement had taken but I had managed to conceal it, and I had hoped if I fell in battle it could be put on my monument (of course I was to have one), "He never flinched."

It seemed to me I ought to be able to march with the best of them. I was a fairly strong boy. I have said that I walked from Boston to Randolph, Vt. The last day I walked thirty-five miles, from White River Junction to Randolph Centre. I had not planned to go so far, but it was a moonlight night, I felt like it, "I got to going", to describe a condition that has often carried me a good ways, and I completed the journey, getting to John

ON THE MARCH

Mead's at two o'clock in the morning and doing a good day's work on the farm the next day. Afterward in the army I grew to march better than the average soldier, I find it recorded that one day I marched eight miles in three hours without taking off my knapsack; and on two of the hardest marches the regiment made I was one of the very few who slept with the colors at night; on the third there were only seventeen that did it and five of them were mounted. on this first march I was "all in" before we had gone ten miles. I would have held out if I could, for pride's sake if for no other, but I saw that it was a question of dropping down in my tracks and so fell out while I still had strength enough to crawl over the stone wall and drop down under a tree. Sunday Nov. 2nd 1862.

Yet

Woke up about 2 o'clock and went on to find the Reg. Soon found Patterson's Brigade and was assured that Carr's Brigade was not far on, so lay down and went to sleep again.

How well I remember that night. It was clear and starlight, and as I dropped down there were the tramp of feet, the murmur of voices, the occasional, "Close up, men: close up!" When I awoke there was not a sound. The troops had passed, the road was empty, there was not a noise; as I sat up and looked around there was absolute solitude. It gave me a curious feeling after living four months as one of a crowd to find myself the one animate thing in sight and hearing. Stuart's cavalry had a way of circling about our troops at pleasure and there was already talk of guerillas, SO I was not sure what manner of men the

first troops I found would be. It was not altogether a safe predicament I was in, but manifestly the thing to do was to go on, following the road the regiment had taken. I was soon reassured. Patterson's brigade was the New Jersey brigade of our division, and as they had halted no doubt the whole division had. So as I was still exhausted I might as well finish my night's sleep here and I did so.

Was awakened at 4 o'clock by the Reveilee and went on. I found the Reg. Made some Coffee and eat breakfast.

Reveille on a march produces an interesting spectacle. Men have been sleeping about in all sorts of positions, many of them dropping down in their tracks without even taking off their cartridge boxes.

up

I

I

Few have had enough under them to keep out the chill of the ground, and as they are awakened find themselves stiff as with rheumatism. After the battle of Gettysburg I lost all the little equipment I had left, and lay down two or three successive nights on wet ground with absolutely nothing under or over me. When I woke had to limber myself out by sections. would move the fingers of my left hand till I could use them; then my left wrist and arm; then my right fingers and wrist and arm: then my left leg; then my right leg, till finally I could get into a sitting posture, and eventually to my feet. It was literally a matter of some. minutes and of detailed effort to stand.

Nov. 2, 1862]

The beating of drums for reveille gave way to the bugle, and this tune became familiar:

REVEILLE.

D.C.

The boys found many words to it, of which this was a common version:

I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up.
I can't get 'em up, I tell you.

I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up,

I can't get 'em up at all.

The corporal's worse than the private,
The sergeant's worse than the corporal,
The lieutenant's worse than the sergeant,
But the captain's worst of all.

I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up,

I can't get 'em up this morning;

I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up,
I can't get 'em up to-day.

In the infantry the bugle call for taps was the same as the artillery tattoo. At its

conclusion the drummer beat a few isolated taps, and the army day was done. All lights must be put out, all noises must cease, and every man but the guard must be in his quarters. But my recollection is that these regulations were seldom enforced.

At daylight we started and I soon fell out again. We got to Fairfax about noon and about a mile beyond had a long rest. Soon I saw the Reg. coming back and falling in with them we went back to Fairfax and encamped near there. My feet were very sore, but on the whole I got along very well.

I wore the regular army shoe, and always the first day of a march after breaking camp my heels became a mass of blisters. I grew to expect it, and to know if I pricked them at night they would begin to

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harden the next day; but this first experience gave me only the present pain, and I had not learned it would not be permanent.

Coarse as army shoes were, I am not sure but with their broad soles and heels they were better than a more fashionable boct. I tried the home kind once or twice but was glad to get back to those dealt out by the government, ungainly as they were. The Duke of Wellington replied to the question what was the best requisite for a soldier, "A good pair of shoes", and when asked what was the next requisite, answered "A spare pair of good soles". A confederate soldier who has laid a Yankee low has been known to rush for him, shouting, "Them's my shoes!" But the confederate shoes were poor as well as scarce. I had no reason to complain of the shoes dealt out to me.

It is said that Lee had no intention of fighting at Gettysburg, and Gen. Heth was sending his soldiers there to get shoes.

Gen. Wadsworth on the march to South Mountain came to a town where all the shoe-stores were closed, and made 200 men take off their shoes and give them to his soldiers.

Gen. Meade held the army for a day after Gettysburg because he found 900 men without shoes.

When Sir Harry Smith, after whose wife Ladysmith was named, was governor of Cape Colony his troops returned from a campaign against the Kaffirs in most dilapidated outfit. He inspected them on parade and made a speech congratulating them on their gallant conduct, but one of the men stepped forward from the ranks and said, "Beggin' your pardon, Sir 'Arry, we don't want no gammon; we want boots."

Whatever else I discarded I always tried to keep several pairs of socks and when possible I kept them washed, but there were many men who owned but one pair at a time and wore them as long as they held together, often not taking them off at night. I do not see how these people endured long marches. Not seldom their feet would get so heated and sore and inflamed that they would take off their shoes and socks and march barefoot, even in cold weather. McCarthy, who says that few confederate soldiers had socks, speaks of this carrying shoes as a common habit, and says bloody footprints in the snow were not infrequent. Besides the inevitable chafing of coarse, ill-fitting shoes, sand and gravel would work in, for when marching in line one could not pick his footsteps; and as there was no

chance to remove these intrusions till the next long halt, hours on perhaps, the feet became raw and the gravel was ground into the open flesh.

At night pitched tent with Prest, and went to bed, but for some time I lay thinking over the events of the day & thinking how different was a Sunday at home from a Sunday in the Camp. Monday. Cos D, F, H & G were ordered to Fairfax Station on the R. R. and a drummer went with each Co, but Phillips went with D.

This I regretted, for there was a possibility of a skirmish and I still wanted to get into a battle.

Went

over to the Camp of the 119th N. Y. which they were leaving. Got a pair of leggings and a good deal of other stuff.

Nov. 2-3, 1862]

It is a pitiful thing to break up camp and leave behind the comforts one has accumulated. You know what it is to pack your kit for the Adirondacks and how hard it is to throw out this and that which seem so necessary and yet which you realize you cannot carry forty miles on your back. But when you throw them out it is to return to them; it is only doing without them for a few days. In the army it was throwing them away for good, and it came hard. The old soldier learned to do it ruthlessly, but even he did not know how long the march was to be, and he often started with what he had to scatter along the road. I saw the most instances of this the next June 15, when we were marching wearily along the railroad on a very hot day, with no water. I never saw elsewhere such a quantity and variety of castaways. I picked up a beautifully bound prayerbook; a bawdy book of which the half page I read before I knew what it was is branded in my memory to this day; even a letter from a wife telling her husband how in her poverty she had finally succumbed to the landlord who had pressed her for rent and would not be otherwise appeased. Think of throwing away a letter like that without even tearing off the address; even I, a stranger, kept it till I could burn it with the book. I threw things away, too, on that march, more and more of them, till when we got to Gettysburg I had only a haversack, a rubber blanket and a canteen left, of all the luxuries I had gathered in the winter camp.

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overcoats and knapsacks, and even with canteens, preferring tin cups. They even discarded cartridge boxes and carried cartridges and caps in their pockets. It was amusing to see the men hauling out of their pockets a mixture of corn, salt, caps, and cartridges, selecting the material needed before they loaded or ate. "Reduced to the minimum," he says, "the private soldier consisted of one man, one hat, one jacket, one shirt, one pair of pants, one pair of drawers, one pair of shoes, and one pair of socks. His baggage consisted of one blanket, one rubber blanket, and one haversack."

There were occasional exceptions. When the 30th Georgia went into its first fight one man had a violin strapped to his back declaring, "If I die I want to die to the sound of Betsy." When the fight was over he was found under a tree, badly wounded, but propped up against the trunk and playing on Betsy.

On the next page is a picture published about the time of the battle of Antietam, representing confederate prisoners. I saw a great many confederate prisoners but I never saw any who looked like this. They all have shoes and hats and clothes enough to cover them. They may have looked that way when they started out from Richmond. but not when they got into Maryland. The picture in "Battles and Leaders", iii. 250, of confederates crossing a ford is most amusing. There was never a Johnny Reb north of the Potomac with any such outfit as these men are carrying.

On the retreat from Moscow Ney had twelve million francs in gold which he saw he must abandon, and made the fatal mistake of distributing it among the soldiers. They so overloaded themselves that hundreds of them failed to reach the frontier. Sir John Moore was wiser. On his retreat