At the close of August there was present for duty: twenty-nine officers, seven hundred and forty-eight men; one officer, forty-two men sick. Absent: five officers, one hundred and seven men on detached service, four men sick, two men in arrest.
Duty in September was about the same as in August, the regiment constantly furnishing details of men for grand-guard and other guards. Drills were maintained with what few men were in camp and some progress made in this direction, but all efforts to advance the regiment in drill could not be satisfactory to officers in command, because of this absence of men each day.
September 14th—Company G, Captain Ward, went on duty as a permanent guard at the Soldiers’ Rest in Alexandria.
September 16th—All troops in the command were paraded to witness an execution of a private Fourth Maryland Volunteers, shot for desertion, at eleven A.M., in the open field northwest of Sickel Barracks Hospital. The negroes in and around Alexandria made a gala occasion of the affair, with tents pitched near the spot for sales of cake, pies, lemonade, etc. So far as appearances went the man to be shot, a thick-set fellow, with heavy, black whiskers, was more indifferent to his fate than the soldiers formed to occupy three sides of a square, obliged to be unwilling witnesses. On the open side were gathered a curious crowd of colored people. The condemned man was marched upon the ground, a band playing a dirge. He was followed by a faithful Newfoundland dog, who had to be taken away when his master took position in front of his coffin, face to the firing party. In a speech he confessed to being a professional bounty-jumper, worth at that moment near twenty thousand dollars, the proceeds of his work in jumping sixteen bounties. When the detail of soldiers fired upon him he fell lengthwise upon his coffin. The troops were then filed past him, and had just commenced the movement when signs of life were shown, necessitating a second file of men to be ordered up and put another volley into him.
At nine o’clock P.M., September 22d, orders were received to march four companies at once to Great Falls, on the Potomac, above Washington, and relieve the Eighty-Fourth N. Y. S. V. Militia, on picket duty for protection of the water works. This order came from headquarters Department Washington, and urged promptness in its execution. A guide was also sent to pilot the detachment. Companies B, C, D and E, with enough detailed men to fill up the ranks, with three days’ rations, and forty rounds of ammunition in the boxes, were at once started on a march of about twenty-five miles, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Stedman. This march was not made in a manner creditable to the regiment. At first it was believed a fight was in progress or imminent, and while such belief lasted the men should have been kept well in hand to be of any use. The facts are: a halt was made about one o’clock A.M., and the men slept on the ground until after daylight, and then straggled into Great Falls during the afternoon and evening in a manner not suggestive of a well-conducted march. Fortunately no fight took place, and no harm resulted. Officers and men of this Eighty-Fourth New York (an Irish regiment) were found loitering around a tavern, more or less under the effects of liquor. This tavern was kept by a Mr. Jackson, brother to the Jackson who killed Colonel Ellsworth in Alexandria at the commencement of hostilities.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stedman reported on the twenty-fourth that so far as he could ascertain the duty at Great Falls would be to take care of themselves as well as they could, to keep a few pickets out on the roads leading to his camp, with a few men on the canal to prevent smuggling. The colonel Eighty-Fourth New York said he never had any orders, and acted as his judgment dictated in all matters at the post; he never made any reports to any one, and had been visited by a staff-officer but once. Stedman also reported the place extremely unhealthy, with chills and fever a prevailing complaint. Stedman’s strength was then three hundred and fifty-six men. The Eighty-Fourth numbered six hundred and fifty men, and did have, at one time, two hundred and fifty men sick.
Stedman wrote Colonel Burrell, on the twenty-fifth, as follows: “Captain Stewart has arrived, and I learn that arrangements have been made for four companies to remain here permanently, and that the balance of the men belonging to these four companies are soon to be sent here. Allow me to inquire if the balance of the officers have been thought of—viz., Lieutenant Sanderson, Company C, Lieutenant Ballou, Company B, and Lieutenant Hodges, Company D? I cannot get along without the full complement of officers for these companies, and I trust they will be relieved at once and ordered to report to me at this post. I shall be obliged to have one for adjutant and one for quartermaster, thus leaving me only ten others for duty; hence the necessity of these officers above named being sent.
“We shall have to secure some transportation here, but as yet I do not know what arrangements we can make for this necessity. We have a post-commissary here, but have to go eleven miles for soft bread. The nearest post-quartermaster is six miles away, at Muddy Branch. After a few days we can make the men quite comfortable, but the place is not a very agreeable one to be in.”
Company C, Captain White, was sent to Orcutt’s Cross Roads, three miles away, September 30th, where was stored a quantity of quartermaster’s property. Guerrillas were operating in the vicinity. A stockade was set on fire and destroyed by them, and an attempt made to blow up the aqueduct, frustrated by tavern-keeper Jackson, who was well known to the Confederates and on good terms with them. General Sheridan, by his operations in the Shenandoah Valley, caused a lull in the fun carried on by these guerrillas, so that the Forty-Second Massachusetts detachment did not have much to do beyond picket and guard duty.
Lieutenant-Colonel Stedman remained at Great Falls until October 15th, when he was ordered back to his regiment with three companies. Captain Tinkham, with Company B, was left at the post. A suggestion from Colonel Burrell, October 18th, to build a stockade, as the position invited an attack, brought the following reply: