February 2nd—Private Henry E. Putnam, Company E, was detailed as clerk at brigade headquarters by brigade orders, where he remained until July, and then returned to his company.
February 18th—Private Edward J. Worcester, Company E, was made regimental armorer, a position he held until his term of service expired, vice Private Loud, detailed to assist Lieutenant Pease.
February 18th—Company K left the regiment to act as pontoniers to the Nineteenth Army Corps.
February 25th—Captain Cogswell, Company F, appointed as corporals George L. Stone and Sylvander Bothwell, in place of C. H. Woodcock and E. A. Spooner, who preferred to join the regimental band.
At the close of February there were present for duty in the four companies at Gentilly Bayou, and Company K, in New Orleans, twenty officers and four hundred and twenty-five men. Present sick in hospital, seventeen men. The average sick per day of the regiment during February was: taken sick, five; returned to duty, five; in hospital, fourteen; in quarters, eleven. Two men were sent to general hospitals in New Orleans. Surgeon Hitchcock returned to duty on the twenty-fourth, relieving Surgeon Smith, and Surgeon Heintzelman reported for duty March 1st.
CHAPTER VII.
Enlisted Men Prisoners at Houston—March for the Federal Lines—Arrival at New Orleans.
The rank and file of the Forty-Second, with captured sailors of the Harriet Lane, were confined in a cotton press, situated in close proximity to Buffalo Bayou. The officers were quartered in the third story of Kennedy’s brick building, upon one of the streets not far from the cotton press.
While in Houston the men received good treatment and were allowed a furlough in the city every day, four men at a time, under guard. Their officers were allowed to visit them frequently, and cheering words, coupled with good advice, was not wanting. The food furnished was the same as issued to Confederate soldiers, consisting of corn meal, rice, sugar, dried and fresh beef, corn coffee, and occasionally a small supply of salt. The coarse ground corn meal was baked and made into what was called corn-dodger, to take the place of the Federal ration of hard bread. Until General Magruder left Houston, when the ration was taken away, the officers were favored with extra rations of flour. A German baker, formerly of Roxbury, Mass., was found, who took this flour in exchange for bread. Diarrhœa and dysentery were quite prevalent under this diet and a change of water, with sudden, sharp changes of weather that occurred, from warm to cold, and vice versa.
Surgeon Cummings, whose ability was acknowledged at all times by the Confederate officers, was, for a time, given his parole of honor, and assisted in taking care of the wounded and sick, Federals and Confederates. It was asserted that many of the Confederate wounded would not allow their own surgeons to attend them, preferring the care of Surgeon Cummings, in whose honor be it said, friend or foe, who needed his services, shared alike.
A jolly, social set of men, who made everything pleasant as possible, composed the guard—a dismounted company of cavalry, known as Captain Clipper’s company. Their discipline and drill was very, very crude, and often a subject of comment and amusement to the prisoners, who heartily enjoyed the ceremony of guard-mounting as done by this company; soldiers continually chewing tobacco, spitting the juice freely, talking with each other, and laughing all through the parade. The unsoldier-like conduct and poor quality of Sibley’s men, and the entire Confederate force under General Magruder, was a noted fact throughout the State: poorly armed and equipped, indifferently officered, without honor, discipline, or esprit de corps. After the fight at Galveston, Magruder issued an order to his command calling attention to these facts, entreating them to reform and be true soldiers, reciting, as an example of what well-disciplined, efficient troops could accomplish, the stubborn defence of Kuhn’s Wharf by the Forty-Second Massachusetts Volunteers.