The Citizen-Soldier Part 2

21. This morning, at two o'clock, I was rattled up by a sentinel, who had come to camp in hot haste to inform me that he had seen and fired upon a body of twenty-five or more men, probably the advance guard of the enemy. He desired me to send two companies to strengthen the outpost. I preferred, however, to go myself to the scene of the trouble; and, after investigation, concluded that the guard had been alarmed by a couple of cows.

Another lot of secession prisoners, some sixty in number, pa.s.sed by this afternoon. They were highly pleased with the manner in which they had been treated by their captors.

The sound of a musket is just heard on the picket post, three-quarters of a mile away, and the shot is being repeated by our line of sentinels.

* * * The whole camp has been in an uproar. Many men, half asleep, rushed from their tents and fired off their guns in their company grounds. Others, supposing the enemy near, became excited and discharged theirs also. The tents were struck, Loomis' First Michigan Battery manned, and we awaited the attack, but none was made. It was a false alarm. Some sentinel probably halted a stump and fired, thus rousing a thousand men from their warm beds. This is the first night alarm we have had.

22. We hear that General c.o.x has been beaten on the Kanawha; that our forces have been repulsed at Mana.s.sas Gap, and that our troops have been unsuccessful in Missouri. I trust the greater part, if not all, of this is untrue.

We have been expecting orders to march, but they have not come. The men are very anxious to be moving, and when moving, strange to say, always very anxious to stop.

23. Officers and men are low-spirited to-night. The news of yesterday has been confirmed. Our army has been beaten at Mana.s.sas with terrible loss. General McClellan has left Beverly for Was.h.i.+ngton. General Rosecrans will a.s.sume command in Western Virginia. We are informed that twenty miles from us, in the direction of Staunton, some three thousand secessionists are in camp. We shall probably move against them.

24. The news from Mana.s.sas Junction is a little more cheering, and all feel better to-day.

We have now a force of about four thousand men in this vicinity, and two or three thousand at Beverly. We shall be in telegraphic communication with the North to-morrow.

The moon is at its full to-night, and one of the most beautiful sights I have witnessed was its rising above the mountain. First the sky lighted up, then a halo appeared, then the edge of the moon, not bigger than a star, then the half-moon, not semi-circular, but blazing up like a great gaslight, and, finally, the full, round moon had climbed to the top, and seemed to stop a moment to rest and look down on the valley.

27. The Colonel left for Ohio to-day, to be gone two weeks.

I came from the quarters of Brigadier-General Schleich a few minutes ago. He is a three-months' brigadier, and a rampant demagogue. Schleich said that slaves who accompanied their masters to the field, when captured, should be sent to Cuba and sold to pay the expenses of the war. I suggested that it would be better to take them to Canada and liberate them, and that so soon as the Government began to sell negroes to pay the expenses of the war I would throw up my commission and go home. Schleich was a State Senator when the war began. He is what might be called a tremendous little man, swears terribly, and imagines that he thereby shows his snap. Snap, in his opinion, is indispensable to a military man. If snap is the only thing a soldier needs, and profanity is snap, Schleich is a second Napoleon. This General Snap will go home, at the expiration of his three-months' term, unregretted by officers and men. Major Hugh Ewing will return with him. Last night the Major became thoroughly elevated, and he is not quite sober yet. He thinks, when in his cups, that our generals are too careful of their men. "What are a th-thousand men," said he, "when (hic) principle is at stake? Men's lives (hic) shouldn't be thought of at such a time (hic). Amount to nothing (hic). Our generals are too d--d slow (hic)." The Major is a man of excellent natural capacity, the son of Hon. Thomas Ewing, of Lancaster, and brother-in-law of W. T. Sherman, now a colonel or brigadier-general in the army. W. T. Sherman is the brother of John Sherman.

The news from Mana.s.sas is very bad. The disgraceful flight of our troops will do us more injury, and is more to be regretted, than the loss of fifty thousand men. It will impart new life, courage, and confidence to our enemies. They will say to their troops: "You see how these scoundrels run when you stand up to them."

29. Was slightly unwell this morning; but about noon accompanied General Reynolds, Colonel Wagner, Colonel Heffron, and a squad of cavalry, up the valley, and returned somewhat tired, but quite well.

Lieutenant-Colonel Owen was also of the party. He is fifty or fifty-five years old, a thin, spare man, of very ordinary personal appearance, but of fine scientific and literary attainments. For some years he was a professor in a Southern military school. He has held the position of State Geologist of Indiana, and is the son of the celebrated Robert J.

Owen, who founded the Communist Society at New Harmony, Indiana. Every sprig, leaf, and stem on the route suggested to Colonel Owen something to talk about, and he proved to be a very entertaining companion.

General Reynolds is a graduate of West Point, and has the theory of war completely; but whether he has the broad, practical common sense, more important than book knowledge, time will determine. As yet he is an untried quant.i.ty, and, therefore, unknown.

30. About two o'clock P. M., for want of something better to do, I climbed the high mountain in front of our camp. The side is as steep as the roof of a gothic house. By taking hold of bushes and limbs of trees, after a half hour of very hard work, I managed to get to the top, completely exhausted. The outlook was magnificent. Tygart's valley, the river winding through it, and a boundless succession of mountains and ridges, all lay before me. My attention, however, was soon diverted from the landscape to the huckleberries. They were abundant; and now and then I stumbled on patches of delicious raspberries. I remained on the mountain, resting and picking berries, until half-past four. I must be in camp at six to post my pickets, but there was no occasion for haste.

So, after a time, I started leisurely down, not the way I had come up, but, as I supposed, down the eastern slope, a way, apparently, not so steep and difficult as the one by which I had ascended. I traveled on, through vines and bushes, over fallen timber, and under great trees, from which I could scarcely obtain a glimpse of the sky, until finally I came to a mountain stream. I expected to find the road, not the stream, and began to be a little uncertain as to my whereabouts. After reflection, I concluded I would be most likely to reach camp by going up the stream, and so started. Trees in many places had fallen across the ravine, and my progress was neither easy nor rapid; but I pushed on as best I could. I never knew so well before what a mountain stream was. I scrambled over rocks and fallen trees, and through thickets of laurel, until I was completely worn out. Lying down on the rocks, which in high water formed part of the bed of the stream, I took a drink, looked at my watch, and found it was half-past five. My pickets were to be posted at six. Having but a half hour left, I started on. I could see no opening yet. The stream twisted and turned, keeping no one general direction for twenty rods, and hardly for twenty feet. It grew smaller, and as the ravine narrowed the way became more difficult. Six o'clock had now come.

I could not see the sun, and only occasionally could get glimpses of the sky. I began to realize that I was lost; but concluded finally that I would climb the mountain again, and ascertain, if I could, in what direction the camp lay. I have had some hard tramps, and have done some hard work, but never labored half so hard in a whole week as I did for one hour in getting up that mountain, pus.h.i.+ng through vines, climbing over logs, breaking through brush. Three or four times I lay down out of breath, utterly exhausted, and thought I would proceed no further until morning; but when I thought of my pickets, and reflected that General Reynolds would not excuse a trip so foolish and untimely, I made new efforts and pushed on. Finally I reached the summit of the mountain, but found it not the one from which I had descended. Still higher mountains were around me. The trees and bushes were so dense I could hardly see a rod before me. It was now seven o'clock, an hour after the time when I should have been in camp. I lay down, determined to remain all night; but my clothing was so thin that I soon became chilly, and so got up and started on again. Once I became entangled in a wilderness of grapevines and briers, and had much difficulty in getting through them. It was now half-past seven, and growing dark; but, fortunately, at this time, I heard a dog bark, a good way off to the right, and, turning in that direction, I came to a cow-path. Which end of it should I take? Either end, I concluded, would be better than to remain where I was; so I worked myself into a dog-trot, wound down around the side of the mountain, and reached the road, a mile and a half south of camp, and went to my quarters fast as my legs could carry me. I found my detail for picket duty waiting and wondering what could so detain the officer of the day.

31. The Fifteenth Indiana, Colonel Wagner, moved up the valley eight miles.

The sickly months are now on us. Considerable dysentery among the men, and many reported unfit for duty.

My limbs are stiff and sore from yesterday's exercise, but my adventure proves to have been a lucky one. The mountain path I stumbled on was unknown to us before, and we find, on inquiry, that it leads over the ridges. The enemy might, by taking this path, follow it up during the day, encamp almost within our picket lines without being discovered, and then, under cover of night, or in the early morning, come down upon us while we were in our beds. It will be picketed hereafter.

A private of Company E wrote home that he had killed two secessionists.

A Zanesville paper published the letter. When the boys of his company read it they obtained spades, called on the soldier who had drawn so heavily on the credulity of his friends, and told him they had come to bury the dead. The poor fellow protested, apologized, and excused himself as best he could, but all to no purpose. He is never likely to hear the last of it.

I am reminded that when coming from Bellaire to Fetterman, a soldier doing guard duty on the railroad said that a few mornings before he had gone out, killed two secessionists who were just sitting down to breakfast, and then eaten the breakfast himself.

AUGUST, 1861.

1. It is said the pickets of the Fourteenth Indiana and the enemy's cavalry came in collision to-day, and that three of the latter were killed.

It is now 9 P. M. Sergeants are calling the roll for the last time to-night. In half an hour taps will be sounded and the lights extinguished in every private's tent. The first call in the morning, reveille, is at five; breakfast call, six; surgeon's call, seven; drill, eight; recall, eleven; dinner, twelve; drill again at four; recall, five; guard-mounting, half-past five; first call for dress-parade, six; second call, half-past six; tattoo at nine, and taps at half-past. So the day goes round.

Hardee for a month or more was a book of impenetrable mysteries. The words conveyed no idea to my mind, and the movements described were utterly beyond my comprehension; but now the whole thing comes almost without study.

2. Jerrolaman went out this afternoon and picked nearly a peck of blackberries. Berries of various kinds are very abundant. The fox-grape is also found in great plenty, and as big as one's thumb.

The Indianians are great ramblers. Lieutenant Bell says they can be traced all over the country, for they not only eat all the berries, but nibble the thorns off the bushes.

General Reynolds told me, this evening, he thought it probable we would be attacked soon. Have been distributing ammunition, forty rounds to the man.

My black horse was missing this morning. Conway looked for him the greater part of the day, and finally found him in possession of an Indiana captain. It happened in this way: Captain Rupp, Thirteenth Indiana, told his men he would give forty dollars for a _sesesh_ horse, and they took my horse out of the pasture, delivered it to him, and got the money. He rode the horse up the valley to Colonel Wagner's station, and when he returned bragged considerably over his good luck; but about dark Conway interviewed him on the subject, when a change came o'er the spirit of his dream. Colonel Sullivan tells me the officers now talk to Rupp about the fine points of his horse, ask to borrow him, and desire to know when he proposes to ride again.

A little group of soldiers are sitting around a camp-fire, not far away, entertaining each other with stories and otherwise. Just now one of them lifts up his voice, and in a melancholy strain sings:

Somebody ---- "is weeping For gallant Andy Gay, Who now in death lies sleeping On the field of Monterey."

While I write he strikes into another air, and these are the words as I catch them:

"Come back, come back, my purty fair maid!

Ten thousand of my _jinture_ on you I will bestow If you'll consent to marry me; Oh, do not say me no."

But the maid is indifferent to _jintures_, and replies indignantly:

"Oh, hold your tongue, captain, your words are all in vain; I have a handsome sweetheart now across the main, And if I do not find him I'll mourn continuali."

More of this interesting dialogue between the captain and the pretty fair maid I can not catch.

The sky is clear, but the night very dark. I do not contemplate my ride to the picket posts with any great degree of pleasure. A cowardly sentinel is more likely to shoot at you than a brave one. The fears of the former do not give him time to consider whether the person advancing is friend or foe.

3. We hear of the enemy daily. Colonel Kimball, on the mountain, and Colonel Wagner, up the valley, are both in hourly expectation of an attack. The enemy, encouraged by his successes at Mana.s.sas, will probably attempt to retrieve his losses in Western Virginia.

4. At one o'clock P. M. General Reynolds sent for me. Two of Colonel Wagner's companies had been surrounded, and an attack on Wagner's position expected to-night. The enemy reported three thousand strong.

He desired me to send half of my regiment and two of Loomis' guns to the support of Wagner. I took six companies and started up the valley.

Reached Wagner's quarters at six o'clock. Brought neither tents nor provisions, and to-night will turn in with the Indianians.

It is true that the enemy number three thousand; the main body being ten or fifteen miles away. Their pickets and ours, however, are near each other; but General Reynolds was misinformed as to two of Wagner's companies. They had not been surrounded.

To-morrow Colonel Wagner and I will make a reconnoissance, and ascertain if the rebels are ready to fight. Wagner has six hundred and fifty men fit for duty, and I have four hundred. Besides these, we have three pieces of artillery. Altogether, we expect to be able to hoe them a pretty good row, if they should advance on us. Four of the enemy were captured to-day. A company of cavalry is approaching. "Halt! who comes there?" cries the sentinel. "Lieutenant Denny, without the countersign."

"All right," shouts Colonel Wagner, "let him come." I write with at least four fleas hopping about on my legs.

5. To-day we felt our way up the valley eight miles, but did not reach the rebels.

To-night our pickets were sure they heard firing off in the direction of Kanawha. If so, c.o.x and Wise must be having a pleasant little interchange of lead.

The chaplain of the Thirteenth Indiana is the counterpart of Scott's Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, or the fighting friar of the times of Robin Hood. In answer to some request he has just said that he will "go to thunder before doing it." The first time I saw this fighting parson was at the burnt bridge near Huttonville. He had two revolvers and a hatchet in his belt, and appeared more like a firebrand of war than a minister of peace. I now hear the rough voice of a braggadocio captain in the adjoining tent, who, if we may believe his own story, is the most formidable man alive. His hair-breadth escapes are innumerable, and his anxiety to get at the enemy is intense. Is it not ancient Pistol come again to astonish the world by deeds of reckless daring?