Aid Society's store-room.
The ideal freedman.
CHAPTER II.
BULL RUN.
July, 1861.
At noon, on the 17th of July, the troops under General McDowell took up their line of march toward Fairfax, without baggage, carrying three days' rations in their haversacks. One division, under General Tyler, which had been encamped at Falls Church, marched to Vienna, while the other divisions, moving from Alexandria, advanced upon Fairfax Court-House.
It was a grand pageant, the long column of bayonets and high-waving flags. Union men whose homes were at Fairfax accompanied the march. "It does my eyes good to see the troops in motion at last," said one. "I have been exiled seven weeks. I know nothing about my family, although I have been within a dozen miles of them all the time. I came from the North three years ago. The Secessionists hated me, they threatened to hang me, and I had to leave mighty sudden."
The head of General Tyler's column reached Vienna at sunset. The infantry turned into the fields, while the artillery took positions on the hills. Near the railroad was a large woodpile, behind which the South Carolinians took shelter, when they fired upon the Ohio boys on the cars. It was convenient for bivouac fires, and the men helped themselves willingly. There I received instructions from Captain Alexander, of the engineers, an old campaigner in Mexico, which, during the four years of the war, I have never forgotten.
"Always sleep on the lee side of your bivouac fire," he said. "The fire dries the ground, the heat envelopes you like a blanket; it will keep off fever and ague. Better endure the discomfort of the smoke, better look like a Cincinnati ham, than to feel an ache in every bone in the morning, which you will be likely to feel if you spread your blankets on the windward side, for then you have little benefit of the heat, but receive the full rush of the air, which chills you on one side, while you are roasting on the other." It was wise counsel, and by heeding it I have saved my bones from many an ache.