While in this camp, June 1st, 1863, the First Brigade of the First Division, fell in and passed in review by quite a body of officers, including Hancock, Howard and Barlow. Gen. Howard made appropriate remarks to the remnants of the 5th N. H., 81st Pa., 64th and 61st N. Y., which he commanded in the battle of Fair Oaks that day, the year before. But a small fraction of the men he commanded that day at 7 a. m. were present to hear his words. He said we were in this great strife to win, and we would fight it to a finish, and we applauded his sentiments by lusty cheers. After this we returned to our quarters. Barlow appeared and gave us a chance to grasp his hand. I am sure this great soldier always had a special affection for the men of the 61st N. Y. He had their entire confidence. Unquestionably they obeyed his orders, first, perhaps, because they didn’t dare do otherwise, and, second, because they trusted his judgment and ability to perform what he set out to do.
Now everything indicated a move at short notice. Sunday, the 14th of June, the Confederates shot off their big guns on the heights of Fredericksburg. I think our people crossed the river on a reconnaissance. At 8 p. m. the Second Corps moved, marched four miles and halted for the night. Monday, the 15th, we passed Stafford Court House. Tuesday, the 16th, the march took us beyond Dumfries’ Court House. This day was excessively hot, and it was stated that quite a number of the Second Corps died of sunstroke. Lieut. Elmore was stricken down by it. He lay on the ground almost motionless—was quite out of his head and talked crazy. He was put into an ambulance, and sent to hospital.
Wednesday, the 17th, at the close of the day, we halted at Pope’s Run on the Orange & Alexandria R. R. Thursday, the 18th, no move was made, except to change camp. In the afternoon of Friday (the 19th) we moved and halted in the evening at Centreville, the place we had been in about nine months before. Saturday about noon we left Centreville for Thoroughfare Gap. We passed over the two Bull Run battlefields, which were fought about a year apart. On the field of 1861 the dead had been buried with the least expenditure of labor. I should say the bodies had been laid close together, and a thin coat of earth thrown over them. As the bodies decayed, the crust fell in exposing in part the skeletons. Some of our men extracted teeth from the grinning skulls as they lay thus exposed to view. On the field of 1862 from one mound a hand stuck out. The flesh instead of rotting off had dried down, and there it was like a piece of dirty marble. Such sights are not refreshing to men going forward in search of a new battlefield. Thoroughfare Gap was reached during the night. We remained in this place until noon of Thursday, the 25th, when we moved, the enemy following us up quite sharply with artillery.
After dark we camped at Gum Spring. It had rained all day. I was placed in charge of the picket line that night, and visited the posts wet to the skin. In the morning a young and innocent calf was sporting in the field we occupied. Some of our wickedest men ended the life of that calf skinned it, and gave me a chunk. I expected to have an unusually good meal out of it. No time was found to cook this meat until we halted at Edward’s Ferry on the Potomac, where we expected to spend the night. Collins and I proposed to have a great meal out of our piece of veal. Our man “Robert” fried it in the stew pan, which was the half of a canteen, and brought it on smoking hot. The experiment of trying to eat it disclosed the fact that it was “deeken veal” and very “stringy,” I think the Spanish war soldiers would have called it. We discarded it and went back to “salt hoss.”
That night we crossed the Potomac on a pontoon, and were again in “My Maryland.” The performances this night were such as to justify vocal daming on the part of a very good Christian. The men were tired, but they were marched and countermarched, and halted and started, and placed and unplaced, until it was fair to conclude that someone was drunk. At last the person directing the column got his bearings and we proceeded. We were plodding along a road in which there was on the right hand side a ditch about two feet deep. Having been up and awake all of the night before, I was fearfully sleepy and hardly able to drag myself along. All at once I went into this ditch, and struck full length. In its bottom there was about two inches of mud, thick enough to encase me. By the time I had pawed out, I could not, if laid out, have been distinguished from a mud sill; but I was too near gone to speak bad words, and so went on in silence, weighing five pounds more than before my descent. Before long we halted and bivouaced for the night. The next morning, the 27th, our regiment started about 10 o’clock, and was thrown out as an advance guard to our baggage train. Along the line of this march there were numerous wild black cherry trees. They were loaded with ripe fruit, and we ate our fill. I think we covered 25 miles this day, and went into camp near Frederick City. We were over this same ground less than a year before, and everything looked as it then did.
Sunday, the 28th, we moved up, and camped just before crossing the Monocacy. We spent the day very comfortably, and went to bed by rolling up in our blankets, when an order came to “fall in.” This we did of course, but wished it had been otherwise. We marched about two miles, and were posted to guard a ford of the Monocacy. We had with us a section of artillery.
Monday, the 29th, we made a march of over thirty-two miles. We halted for the night some miles beyond Uniontown, at about 10 p. m. I know I was so completely tired out, that, as soon as arms were stacked, I stretched out without unrolling my blankets, and I knew nothing till the next morning, when I was awakened by the sun shining into my eyes. I was so stiff that it took some time to get on to my legs, but, after moving about for a while, I was all right.
Tuesday, the 30th, we remained in camp, many straggled in the march of the day before, and during this day most of them came up. Wednesday, July 1st, we started out, none of us knowing for where. We heard no sound of battle that day. No doubt the lay of the land shut off the thunder of the guns. A rumor soon became current that a fight was in progress, and that Gen. Reynolds had been killed. We marched through a little village, perhaps it was Taneytown. Our signalers were up in the steeple of a church on the street we were passing through, and their flags were we-wawing at a great rate. Before long the ambulance containing the corpse of Reynolds passed us. We halted for the night. After sundown our brigade, and probably the division, were in line of battle. As soon as arms were stacked, we went to a rail fence, took down the rails, brought them to our line, and, before going to bed—i. e., spreading our blankets on the ground—we had staked up those rails and banked earth against them so that they would have served quite a purpose as breastworks. By this time lines of camp fires were burning as far as we could see, indicating that the army was massed here, or the ruse was worked to make the enemy think so.
Thursday, the 2d, we were quietly ordered to turn out. Breakfast was eaten, the guns and ammunition were inspected, and by six or seven o’clock we were in motion. On the march I remember we went through a small piece of open timber, where our doctors were posted, and as we went by we shook hands with them, and exchanged little pleasantries. I remember saying to them, “We’ll see you again later.” I tried to say this with a jaunty air, but down in my shoes I did not feel a bit jaunty. I think we all felt that this should be a death grapple, and, if Lee went further north, it ought to be over the played out ranks of this army. We continued our march and halted in a large open field to the left of the village of Gettysburg. Our brigade was massed, and commanded by Col. Edward E. Cross of the 5th N. H.
We remained in this place during the long hours of the day. There was no noise, save occasionally slight picket firing, but it was not the silence of assured quiet. It was the painful waiting before the descent of the certain cyclone.