Some incidents of interest occurred during our encampment at Malvern Hill. It was hot and uncomfortable and sorrowful, for there were many deaths and bands playing the Dead March were continually heard through the day. Deaths from sickness and many wounded.
One night, a few nights after we encamped, we were roused at midnight by a very lively cannonade from the opposite side of the river. Our camp was about a quarter of a mile back from the river, the long roll was beaten throughout the army and the brigade turned out and stood in line. I do not think there were any casualties in the brigade though there were some in our division from its shells. One man I remember as Dr. Oakley asked me to go and see a man in the field hospital who had his entire stomach carried away by shells and lived four days afterwards. This wound is reported among the curiosities of the war. I saw the man twice and strange to say, he appeared to be suffering no pain except through hunger.
A few days after our arrival at the Camp, President Lincoln came down and reviewed the army. I presume by reason of the small space in which it was necessary to hold it each brigade was drawn up on the northern side of its own camp in double columns, closed en masse, and the field officers were dismounted. My clothing, all except the one suit which I had during the seven days' battle, had been lost and it happened that the only coat I had was a short jacket coming to the waist, and the only trousers I had were those which I had worn since the 27th of June. My saddle had been hit twice with pieces of shell, once while I was in it and once when I was not. It was not torn much but the screws were all loosened in it and one of them had worked up and from day to day had torn my trousers to such an extent that I can only say they were not fit to appear in review; so upon seeing my condition General Taylor excused me from going in the review and I sat in the door of my tent next to General Taylor's and within a few feet of it. President Lincoln rode a large bay horse and was dressed in a black frock coat and a high silk hat and rode at the head of the cavalcade with General McClellan and his staff of probably a hundred officers immediately behind him. They passed down from east to west along the front of the army, the President taking off his hat as he passed the colors of each brigade. When they arrived in front of our brigade they halted and General Taylor and the President came up to General Taylor's tent, no others were with them. The President dismounted and my servant, James Huggs, who is still living, brought camp stools and they sat down under the fly of General Taylor's tent; it seems that the President wanted a drink of water, the day being very hot. James Huggs went to the spring a few yards away and got some water and the President drank heartily of it; as he got up to go away he saw me standing in the position of a soldier facing him at my tent door and he said to General Taylor: "I suppose this is one of your staff, I hope that he has not been wounded?" General Taylor called me to them and told him that I was Captain Grubb on his staff, and told one or two very pleasant things about me to the President which caused my cheeks to tingle and then taking me by the shoulder, he said: "He would have been in the review but his clothes were not good enough to allow him." President Lincoln put his hand on my shoulder, I shall never forget the kind expression of his magnificent eyes, as he looked me in the face and said: "My son, I think your country can afford to give you a new pair of breeches." As these were the only words that President Lincoln ever said to me they impressed themselves very deeply on my mind. I have never forgotten them and never shall.
The rest of our stay at Harrison's Landing is filled with unpleasant memories for me. I had contracted typhoid fever although I did not know it and tried to fight it off, and did so until the morning the brigade marched from Harrison's Landing when in the wind and dust of that morning I mounted my brown stallion with great difficulty, fell over the other side of him into the dust and the next thing I remember was awaking up in New York Harbor in the hospital ship some ten days afterwards with two Sisters of Mercy taking care of me and my old servant, James Huggs, standing at the foot of the bed. He had hired a colored man whom he found and helped him carry me down to the water's edge and succeeded in getting me on board the hospital ship "Spaulding" in a little dug out canoe, for the anchor of that ship had been raised and she was the last hospital ship to leave filled with sick and wounded.
I did not know that the brigade had been most dreadfully cut up and General Taylor killed at the Bull Run Bridge until after I had been sent from the hospital ship to my father's house in Burlington, where I found a letter from Colonel Torbert commanding the brigade and asking me to serve on his staff. I joined the brigade just before the Crampton's Pass battle (and my account of that which I delivered at a reunion of the brigade at my place, Edgewater Park, printed at their request I herewith enclose).
We saw the battle of Antietam and were under a terrible artillery fire but we were in the reserve and I am sure that I need only say that it was the opinion of every man and officer in our brigade that if the Sixth Corps had been thrown forward that afternoon over the Burnside bridge after Burnside crossed it and placed across the right flank of the Confederate army, which were all there lying in the wheat field opposite us, the result of that battle would have been far different from what it was.
After Antietam we marched to Bakersville and encamped there and were there joined by the Twenty-third New Jersey Regiment, into which I was promoted as Major a few days before the battle of Fredericksburg. (And I would suggest that as the history of that regiment which, of course, is part of the history of the brigade, has been carefully collected and printed by the Regimental Association of the Twenty-third Regiment, and that regiment was in that brigade until the expiration of its term of service in June, 1863, and in battle with the brigade in the battles of Fredericksburg and Salem Church, that that printed history be received as part of the history of the brigade.)
E. BURD GRUBB.
