That night we lay out on the ground alongside of the Orange & Alexandria railroad. When morning dawned we found that there were other troops bound for somewhere, too. Every man made his own coffee and we ate our first meal of “hardtack,” and were not long in finding out that the safest way was to break them in small pieces and sort the worms out.
After that breakfast I went over to a sutler’s tent and filled up my haversack with fried pies, cookies, crackers and other trash that a boy likes.
Late that afternoon we started out on the “pike” in the direction of Fairfax court house and were rushed along at a lively gait until nearly midnight. The men were young and light hearted, and as we marched there was the rollicking laugh, sharp joke, equally as keen a retort, queer and humorous sayings, breaking out from the ranks here and there, and then all would sing, “John Brown’s Body” and “We’ll Hang Jeff Davis to a Sour Apple Tree.”
We halted that night near a little place called Accotink and bivouacked in a large open field, and I recall how quickly the rail fences were converted into huge camp fires, for the Virginia nights are nearly always chilly.
The march was resumed early the next morning and the day was a hot one.
The most aggravating thing to the soldiers on a march is the unevenness of the marching. First you are rushed along so that the short legged ones are compelled to double-quick to keep up, and then there will be a halt of perhaps fifteen to thirty minutes when you are kept standing in the broiling sun; then start again and stop five minutes later.
It struck me as funny that not one person in ten you met in the country knew anything about distances. If you met a colored man and asked how far it was to Manassas he would reply “’Deed, boss, I don’t know, ’spec ’tis a right smart distance.”
Another would say it was eight miles, and after going a mile or two you would ask again and would be told it was ten miles and a “bit.”
NOTHING LIKE HARDTACK.
I found on the second day’s march that the sutler’s “goodies” which I had stocked up with had absorbed a little too much of the flavor of my haversack to be palatable, so I returned to Uncle Sam’s ration of hardtack, salt junk and coffee, which cannot be beaten for a steady diet when campaigning.