CHAPTER XVII
THE MUSTER OUT AND HOME AGAIN
On the 14th of May we received orders to proceed to Harrisburg for muster out. There was, of course, great rejoicing at the early prospect of home scenes once more. We walked on air, and lived for the next few days in fond anticipation. We were the recipients of any amount of attention from our multitude of friends in the division. Many were the forms of leave-taking that took place. It was a great satisfaction to realize that in our comparatively brief period of service we had succeeded in winning our way so thoroughly into the big hearts of those veterans. The night before our departure was one of the gladdest and saddest of all our experience. The Fourteenth Connecticut band, that same band which had so heroically played out between the lines when the Eleventh Corps broke on that fateful Saturday night at Chancellorsville, came over and gave us a farewell serenade. They played most of the patriotic airs, with "Home, Sweet Home," which I think never sounded quite so sadly sweet, and suggestively wound up with "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." Most of the officers and men of the brigade were there to give us a soldier's good-by, and Major-General Couch, commanding our corps (the Second), also paid us the compliment of a visit and made a pleasant little speech to the men who were informally grouped around head-quarters, commending our behavior in three of the greatest battles of the war.
It had been our high honor, he said, to have had a part in those great battles, and though new and untried we had acquitted ourselves with great credit and had held our ground like veterans. He expressed the fervent hope that our patriotism would still further respond to the country's needs, and that we would all soon again be in the field. Our honors were not yet complete. General French, commanding our division, issued a farewell order, a copy of which I would have been glad to publish, but I have not been able to get it. It was, however, gratifying in the extreme. He recounted our bravery under his eye in those battles and our efficient service on all duty, and wound up by saying he felt sure that men with such a record could not long remain at home, but would soon again rally around their country's flag. Of General Couch, our corps commander, we had seen but little, and were therefore very pleasantly surprised at his visit. Of General French, bronzed and grizzly bearded, we had seen much; all our work had been under his immediate supervision. He was a typical old regular, and many were the cuffs and knocks we received for our inexperience and shortcomings, all, however, along the lines of discipline and for our good, and which had really helped to make soldiers of us. These incidents showed that each commanding general keeps a keen eye on all his regiments, and no one is quicker to detect and appreciate good behavior than they. We felt especially pleased with the praises of General French, because it revealed the other side of this old hero's character. Rough in exterior and manner of speech, he was a strong character and a true hero.
His position at the breaking out of the war will illustrate this. He was a Southerner of the type of Anderson and Farragut. When so many of his fellows of the regular army, under pretext of following their States, went over into rebellion and treason, he stood firm and under circumstances which reflect great credit upon him. He had been in Mexico and had spent a life on the frontier, and had grown old and gray in the service, reaching only the rank of captain. When the war finally came he was in command of a battery of artillery stationed some three hundred and fifty miles up the Rio Grande, on the border of Mexico. He was cut off from all communication with Washington, and the commander of his department, the notorious General David E. Twiggs, had gone over to the Confederacy. He was, therefore, thoroughly isolated. Twiggs sent him a written order to surrender his battery to the rebel commander of that district. His characteristic reply was, that he would "see him and the Confederacy in hell first;" that he was going to march his battery into God's country, and if anybody interfered with his progress they might expect a dose of shot and shell they would long remember. None of them felt disposed to test his threat, and so he marched his battery alone down through that rebel country those three hundred and fifty miles and more into our lines at the mouth of the Rio Grande, bringing off every gun and every dollar's worth of government property that he could carry, and what he could not carry he destroyed. He was immediately ordered north with his battery and justly rewarded with a brigadier-general's commission.
Early on the morning of the 15th we broke camp and bade farewell to that first of the world's great armies, the grand old Army of the Potomac. Need I say that, joyous as was our home-going, there was more than a pang at the bottom of our hearts as we severed those heroic associations? A last look at the old familiar camp, a wave of the hand to the friendly adieus of our comrades, whose good-by glances indicated that they would gladly have exchanged places with us; that if our hearts were wrung at going, theirs were, too, at remaining; a last march down those Falmouth hills, another and last glance at those terrible works behind Fredericksburg, and we passed out of the army and out of the soldier into the citizen, for our work was now done and we were soldiers only in name.
As our train reached Belle-plain, where we were to take boat for Washington, we noticed a long train of ambulances moving down towards the landing, and were told they were filled with wounded men, just now brought off the field at Chancellorsville. There were upward of a thousand of them. It seems incredible that the wounded should have been left in those woods during these ten to twelve days since the battle. How many hundreds perished during that time for want of care nobody knows, and, more horrible still, nobody knows how many poor fellows were burned up in the portions of those woods that caught fire from the artillery. But such is war. Dare any one doubt the correctness of Uncle Billy Sherman's statement that "War is hell!"
Reaching Washington, the regiment bivouacked a single night, awaiting transportation to Harrisburg. During this time discipline was relaxed and the men were permitted to see the capital city. The lieutenant-colonel and I enjoyed the extraordinary luxury of a good bath, a square meal, and a civilized bed at the Metropolitan Hotel, the first in five long months. Singular as it may seem, I caught a terrific cold as the price I paid for it. The next day we were again back in Camp Curtin, at Harrisburg, with nothing to do but to make out the necessary muster rolls, turn in our government property,—guns, accoutrements, blankets, etc., and receive our discharges. This took over a week, so that it was the 24th of May before we were finally discharged and paid off. Then the several companies finally separated.