There must be a second edition of this book, because none of us will permit that glorious controversy with the Pension Office to be cut off in its prime. We must get the rest of that story. You have now enlisted in the war against the noble army of Red Tape, and while I daresay it will be bloodless, I trust that it will not on that account fail to be marked by appropriate casualties. Uncle Sam has the most wasteful, the most ineffective, and the worst administrative system in the world. When Senator Aldrich said in the Senate a few months ago that he could save three hundred million dollars a year if permitted to run the Government on business principles, people gasped, and the wiseacres of the newspaper press scornfully smiled. Personally, I have no doubt whatever that he spoke with exactness and without exaggeration. Your little experience is only one illustration. to which thousands might be added. But I am wandering from the Civil War and your reminiscences of it. With sincere regards NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER Columbia University, Thanksgiving Day, 1910 That was on my father's side. On the other, the Amos Farnsworth, minute-man at Lexington, corporal at Bunker Hill, and lieutenant at Ticonderaga, whose published diary is one of the important sources of history, was a cousin of my grandfather's great grandfather, and my mother herself kept a diary for me from my second birthday till I was eight years old the 98-178 Jun the 11725 Tyng and whit Come from baring his men at pigwoket PAGE FROM JONATHAN NUTTING'S ACCOMPT BOOK preserved by the Massachusetts Historical society was my great-grandfather. His grandfather Jonathan Nutting kept an "accompt book" that is still carefully preserved in the family. Here is a page from it, written almost two centuries ago. and able to carry it on myself. I have not only maintained the habit but preserved the records, so that I have a nearly unbroken autobiography of more than sixty years. Most of the entries have no interest for A Day of the Har three Regrday. Bett. 1b. 1862. Spoday I left Camit Day was a PHOTOENGRAVED FROM THE ORIGINAL DIARY anyone else: indeed in the early days the weather predominates, and there are occasional statements (not absent in what I have here copied) that there is nothing of interest to record. But during the war there was often something doing, and the days' records, though brief, have enough of detail and frankness to give some picture of what army life was to a young boy. Probably most of my readers will wonder why I have not omitted or modified some of the entries, but to my mind that would destroy the value of the whole. Actual facts carry weight; facts modified become fiction. I am sure every statement in these entries was true or believed by me to be exactly true at the time. I do not find any indication that I wrote or omitted anything with reference to the diary's being read by any one else. read by any one else. It was as accurate as the items in a cash book. To change it now, even by omission, would be like making false entries. But I have no disposition to conceal anything. One can never write about one's self impersonally, but I can come pretty near it as I copy the story of this little friendless boy of fourteen, undergoing an experience unlike anything that had ever happened to him before or has ever happened to him since. All this occurred forty-five years ago, in the first quarter of my life. I have heard old soldiers say that as they talked about the war it seemed in a way as if they were telling legends that they had heard rather than experiences they had undergone, and I have something of this feeling. On the other hand I have Preface been astonished at the way forgotten facts have come back to me. When I first took up these reminiscences I read over a roster of the regiment, and could place hardly two score names. Now there are more than a hundred of whom I can recall how they looked and incidents in which they figured. Still more true is this of my own experiences. These brief entries bring back so much that there have been days when I seemed to be living again at Falmouth or Brandy station, and nights when my dreams have been of my old army surroundings. One thing I have had foremost in mind, to give a picture of camp life during the civil war. deal with the battles. Of these I have little to say except as they affected me. What I seek to show is how a little fifer ate when he ate and how he sometimes went hungry; how he slept, when he slept, and how he sometimes stood by the fire because his blanket would not keep him warm; how he marched and drilled and went on fatigue duty; what special temptations he encountered and what followed when he yielded to them. Most books of reminiscences There is nothing here to be especially proud of, and there is a great deal to be very much ashamed of, but I have copied it just as it is, even to the spelling and the erratic punctuation. It will be noted from the photo-engraved page that my penmanship was as full of flourishes and inconsistencies as my conduct. As I read over this diary I am sorry for the little boy who underwent so many privations and sufferings, but I was not sorry for myself at the time. One of my childhood stories was of some little children who had to sleep with only a door to cover them, and who asked their mother 7 what those poor little children did who did not have any door. I slept night after night on the wet ground with nothing under or over me, and should have looked upon a door as opulence, but I had the habit of comparing my lot with those worse off instead of envying those more fortunate, so I did not waste much time in repining. In reviewing my army life as a whole the reader must see that I was remarkably fortunate. In the first place, I was lucky to have been assigned to the 1st Massachuestts. For one thing I got home earlier, since it was the first three years regiment mustered in and of course the first to be mustered out. But apart from that, the old 1st was a regiment to be proud of. There may have been other regiments with as good a record: there surely was none with a better. Ask any old army of the Potomac man what it meant to belong to Hooker's brigade of Sickles's division of the 3d corps. It was not only that I shared the honor of these accredited fighters, but I got my notions of war from these men. When the silly froth was knocked out of my little head it was supplanted by what I learned from men who had fought in both Bull Runs and who had been at the forefront in the Peninsula campaign. I should say that ours was a cleanmouthed regiment. My recollection is rather of hearing vulgar stories checked than of listening to them. We had a large proportion of sensible, mature, solid men, who enlisted because it seemed a duty, and when they got back home took up again the occupations they had relinquished. I have attended two reunions of the regiment, and both times I have been impressed by the strong and serious pat riotism they still manifested. I have heard veterans belittle the issues at stake during the civil war, and talk slightingly of what was accomplished and how and why it was done. There was not a word of this at these meetings. The old songs were sung, the old flag was cheered, the boys who had dropped out during the year were remembered first as good soldiers in battle. I was as proud in Boston, half a century later, to belong to such a regiment, as I had ever been as a boy in the field. In the second place I was fortunate that at the time I joined it this regiment was relieved from duty at the front, so that I had time to be acclimated before I saw hard service. After two months in the regiment my first march proved too much for me. What might have happened if I had been sent to the front upon my enlistment, when the army was retiring from before Richmond? On the other hand, think what a privilege it was to be present at the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, not only four of the great battles of the war, but all differing so much in commanders and in their general features. In the third place I escaped not only wounds but sickness. I was not seriously ill during my service, and the outdoor life so strengthened me that I have never been seriously ill since. So the minor fatigues and privations recorded here were really of little consequence. I did not always have food, but I always had the appetite for it, and that is much more important. I was sometimes too cold to sleep, but when I did sleep I slept soundly. On the whole I had a pretty good time in the army, and though I was glad to get my discharge I would not exchange my experiences there for anything else that could be offered me. I feel that those who do not care for my story ought to like the pictures. They were all drawn or photographed at the time, and the very crudeness of some of them is evidence of their fidelity. The great artist of the war was Edwin Forbes, and besides his pictures in Frank Leslie's I have reproduced many of his "Life Studies of the Great Army", a portfolio of sketches that reach straight to the old soldier's heart. There were other good men, too-Winslow Homer, who has died the week I write these lines; and Homer Davenport, and Henry Lovie, and H. R. Ward and A. R. Waud and William Waud and C. E. F. Hiller, and James O. Guirl and H. Mosher, and F. H. Schell and A. W. Warren; you will find their names in the index with such of their pictures as I have been able to trace. Of Thomas Nast's illustrations I have given only two, on pages 127 and 212. They are in contrast with the rest in that they picture what could not possibly occur. For the life-like initial sketches I am indebted to Comrade H. W. Beecher of the Conn. Light Battery, who drew them for his history of that regiment and kindly loaned them to me. It has proved a great pleasure to get these pages together. I had not thought of my diaries as of interest except to my grandchildren, but when my friend President Nicholas Murray Butler suggested that a soldier's genuine experiences would have value, no matter how insignificant he was, I set to work at once and this book is the result. I have remarked several times in the narrative that this is not a history of the |