Ten years in the ranks, U.S. Army

by Augustus Meyers

It was the first week in August; most of the three-months' warriors had left for their homes and order was being restored. The streets were patrolled by regulars and all soldiers found in the city without permission were arrested, taken to a central guard-house and then returned to their respective commands. General George B. McClellan had been called to Washington immediately after the battle of Bull Run and placed in command of the Army of the Potomac. He was busy with his staff in organizing a great army. Our quarters being but a short distance from the headquarters of General McClellan, I had frequent opportunities of seeing him there and also riding through the streets, followed by a brilliant staff, among whom were a number of foreign officers in showy uniforms adorned with decorations and much gold lace. I also saw President Lincoln on the avenue a few times and saw his boys in Zouave uniforms "playing soldier" with some companions on the lawn in front of the White House.

There were probably not more than fifty thousand troops in and about Washington upon our arrival, but they soon began to come in at a rate of forty thousand a month, so that by the first of November, 1861, the numbers had reached one hundred and seventy thousand. They were young men who enlisted for three years or the duration of the war; they were patriotic and earnest and were not tempted to enlist by the payment of bounties. These soldiers became the flower of the Army of the Potomac and, I think, were not equaled by any subsequent levies.

A thousand regular soldiers had preceded our small command to Washington and about eight hundred of them had been in the engagement at Bull Run, including some marines. Among them were also the two companies of our regiment previously mentioned. From them we learned many details of what occurred on that disastrous day. This small body of eight hundred regulars and marines were unaffected by the panic and covered the retreat of the Federal Army. Many of the regulars were quartered near the then outskirts of the city on the north side in hastily constructed wooden buildings, which were called Kalorama Barracks. There were at that time six companies of my regiment in Washington, also the regiment headquarters and the band. Four other companies were with the western armies and remained there throughout the war. During my entire ten years' service I never saw more than six companies of the regiment together at one time.

After a stay of about two weeks in the K Street house in Washington my company (D) and Company A were ordered to Georgetown and quartered in Forrest Hall, a large sized building on the corner of what were then called High and Gay Streets. This building is still standing at this date (1913). There was a large entertainment hall on the second floor with a raised stage at one end and many wooden benches on the floor. Company A occupied this apartment, while my company took the third floor, which was divided into rooms. We slept on the bare floors, as we had done in K Street, but had the additional comfort of some of the wooden benches to sit on. The first floor was used for a guard-house with a large room for prisoners brought in by the patrols; the basement, which had an alley on the rear leading out into Gay Street, was used for our kitchen.

On the hot day that we moved into this building a severe thunderstorm broke out in the afternoon and the rain fell in torrents. We thought this a good opportunity to get a refreshing bath, and as the high roof of the building could not be overlooked from any of the houses in the neighborhood, a number of us took off our clothing and ascended to the roof and remained there until the storm was over; later on we took our baths in Rock Creek and our swims in the Potomac above the Aqueduct Bridge.

It was the custom then in the regular army for every private soldier to serve a term of two weeks as company cook. There were two cooks to each company, a head cook and an assistant. After serving as assistant for a week, one then became chef, unless the chef was satisfactory and desired to remain longer. It often happened that both of the cooks remained for months; they got no extra pay, but were relieved from all other duties and had some perquisites in selling soap-grease, if there was a market for it. It was my hard luck to be detailed as assistant cook after we arrived at Forrest Hall, much to my disgust. After a week's service I was declared to be a failure and returned to company duty.

A few days later a vacancy occurred and I was promoted to corporal with two dollars per month additional pay, making fifteen dollars per month, for the pay of the army had been raised from eleven to thirteen dollars per month for a private soldier. About this time we received four months' pay in greenbacks with coupons attached to the larger notes—the ten and twenty dollar bills, I think. Heretofore we had always been paid in gold and silver.

We were busy while in Georgetown; we kept a main guard with a sergeant at the hall in charge of the prisoners, a corporal and six privates at the Aqueduct Bridge, and the same at the foot of High Street, where there was a flat-boat rope ferry to Analostan Island in the Potomac opposite Georgetown. The two companies in Georgetown did not have their full complement of men; some had been detailed as clerks in the War Department, and others as orderlies at army headquarters on "extra duty," as it was called. This made us somewhat short on the "present for duty" number and caused a tour of twenty-four hours on guard every three days or less. We also did considerable drilling in company and skirmish drills, sometimes brigade drills and a few reviews for General McClellan and staff. We had to patrol the streets of Georgetown from eight A.M. till ten P.M. for two hours on and two off. The patrol was a squad of eight privates under a sergeant or a corporal, often accompanied by an officer in the daytime. This patrol had authority to enter saloons and other places and search them for soldiers and demand their passes; every soldier on the street was halted, and if he had no pass or a poor excuse he was told to fall into the ranks and march with the patrol until it repassed or returned to the main guard, where he was turned over to the sergeant, who recorded his name, company and regiment and then locked him up. There was, however, considerable leniency both on the part of the officers and the non-commissioned officers in command of the patrol; if the soldier were sober and had some sort of a plausible excuse, he was often simply ordered to get out of town quickly and return to his camp. It was the drunks that gave us trouble, when we tried to march them in the ranks. In some extreme cases we took them to the guard-house in a borrowed hand-cart. One day the patrol arrived just in time to save the "Eagle Bakery," where a drunken soldier was wrecking the place because he failed to get a baked eagle he had ordered.

About this time a very young officer named William Kidd, who belonged to a prominent New York family, joined my company as second lieutenant. He was a civil appointee and knew very little about drill or military matters in general, but was trying to learn. He was well liked by the men for his genial nature. Often when I was on patrol with him he would say, "Now, Corporal, you head her in any direction you like and don't march too fast." He let many a soldier off with a reprimand such as, "If I catch you in town again without a pass I'll have you court-martialed and shot before sunrise." Sometimes he stopped at a cigar store and bought cigars for the patrol, which he handed to us when we were dismissed. Lieutenant Kidd, to our great regret and sorrow, was killed in less than a year at the second battle of Bull Run.

One evening I received word from a friend, a sergeant of a New York regiment which was encamped a short distance from Georgetown on the Tennalytown road that he had been arrested by the patrol and wished me to try and have him released so that he might return to his camp that night, as he feared that if he was returned to his regiment from the central guard-house it would mean the loss of his sergeant's stripes and reduction to the ranks. I implored the sergeant of our main guard to release him, but he refused as he had just reported the number of his prisoners to the officer of the day. He agreed, however, to make an exchange with me if I brought him another prisoner when I went out on patrol from eight to ten that evening. I started out with my squad at the appointed time. It was a stormy night, the wind howled and the rain beat fiercely upon us; the streets seemed deserted and there were no soldiers in sight. Instead of resting at times in a sheltered place, as we were accustomed to do in bad weather, I kept my patrol moving and visited most of the places where soldiers were in the habit of congregating, despite the grumbling of my squad. Our time was nearly up and I had encountered but two or three soldiers, whom I could not arrest as they showed me passes. I was in despair, when suddenly, while passing along Bridge Street on our return to the guard-house, I caught a glimpse of a blue uniform in the back room of a saloon, through a partly opened door. I halted my squad and went into the saloon, where I found a soldier asleep on a chair. I shook him and demanded to see his pass. He was mildly inebriated, but managed to explain that he was on duty as a nurse in the hospital close by and did not require a pass in Georgetown, but not having a pass was enough for me. I took him out, put him into the ranks and turned him over to the sergeant of the guard in exchange for my friend, who hurried off to his camp. The man I arrested was soon released by the sergeant when he satisfied him as to the truth of his story.