October 18th. The battery was reviewed by Colonel Abbott, commanding our brigade.
October 20th. Captain Peirce, Chief of Artillery on the staff of General De Russy, inspected our battery to-day.
November 18th. Private Andrew Turner, who had gone to his home in Hope Village on a sick furlough, died in that place on this date.
November 17th. The battery was reviewed by Gen. William F. Barry, chief of artillery.
CHAPTER IV.
Again in Camp Barry—Batteries Reviewed by President Lincoln—Battery H Assigned to the Ninth Army Corps.
On the 22d of November our battery was ordered to proceed to our old camping ground, Camp Barry, on the Bladensburg Road, in the vicinity of Washington. We moved at two P. M. from Fort Scott, passing through Washington to Camp Barry, and occupied the old barracks that we had dedicated on January 1st. As this was the Sabbath, and as we observed the worshipers returning from church, it brought vividly to our minds the scenes we were accustomed to witness in our far-away northern homes, and of the privileges we had been deprived since we “donned the blue” and set forth to defend the Union established by our fathers.
Brevet Lieut.-Col. Crawford Allen, Jr.
A little more than a year ago we had first encamped on this familiar ground, and although our battery had not suffered from the casualties of direct conflict with the enemy, yet we mourned the loss of several tried comrades who had succumbed to disease and lay buried near the little chapel at Fairfax Station, while others who could not withstand the hardships and exposures incident to a soldier’s life had been discharged from the service for disability, and had returned to their homes with shattered constitutions, the result of disease contracted in the army. Besides, we had lost many by desertion. The men who enlisted in New York had no intention of exposing their worthless bodies to rebel shot or bullet, and such recruits were a dead loss to the government. We record with great satisfaction the fact that but very few of these deserters were men who had enlisted in Rhode Island. Now that we had been rid of these worthless and unprofitable soldiers, those that remained in Camp Barry were comrades whom we had learned to respect and trust, and with whom we were still further to share the vicissitudes of a soldier’s career.