August 9th, Sunday. At 6:30 o'clock we passed the bar, left the pilot and in a short time were out of sight of land. The captain of the boat said he would land us in New York by Saturday night, if all went well.
August 10th. It was a fine morning and we were enjoying ourselves with a deck passage at that.
August 11th. This morning we passed several lighthouses; one was upon Tortugas Island.
August 12th. The old steamer was making good speed. Comrade Chadwick died last night; this morning he was buried at sea. He was a member of our regiment and enlisted from Andover, this state.
August 13th. This morning was very fine, but the ship rolled and pitched considerable, owing to being in the Gulf Stream.
August 14th. The old ship was making good speed and we were hoping to get into New York harbor by Saturday night, as it was getting pretty tiresome on the old filthy vessel, with the vermin almost unbearable.
August 15th. This was a beautiful day and the old steamer continued making good time.
August 16th. The day was fine and we expected to get into port at night and our expectations were realized, about seven o'clock after being in this dirty place for a whole week.
August 17th. We arrived in port last night but had to stay upon the ship another night. I managed to get a small loaf of bread and if I remember correctly, I wasn't long devouring it, for we had had nothing but hard-tack and raw salt pork to eat and condensed water to drink since we went aboard the ship at New Orleans. This (Sunday) morning we were allowed to go ashore and were kept penned up till about night when we went aboard the good-looking old boat, City of Hartford. We arrived in Hartford, if my memory serves me correctly, at about 10 o'clock Monday morning, August 18th, 1863, and I guess we were about as tough a looking set of fellows as ever came off the boat. Yes, I must admit, we were a pretty hard looking set, what there was left of us, for we had dwindled down to less than one-third the number which left Hartford about a year previous. What a change had come over us. Why, some of our friends didn't know us, we had changed so. One comrade in particular I will mention, Wm. Goodrich. He went from Glastonbury in my company. He was a big fine looking man, weighing two hundred and fifty pounds when we went away, and when he came home he hardly weighed one hundred and fifty. Was it any wonder that our friends couldn't recognize us with the beards we had grown on our faces, and the soiled clothing we were wearing? Well, I finally reached home and you can imagine how glad I was. I think that I felt much as the Prodigal Son did when he returned home. To get my clothes off and get into a good bed, (which I had not done for about a year) and to be cared for by a kind and loving mother, I never felt more like singing, "Home, Sweet Home."
In closing this sketch of the gallant Twenty-fifth Regiment, I would say that war, as far as my experience goes, is not the thing it's cracked up to be. Though anyone can get used to all kinds of horrid sights, in a measure, I could tell some things that I don't think one would care to hear. But I will omit all description as it is best learned by experience. I think scant justice has been done to the Nineteenth Army Corps and General Banks, inasmuch as the field of action while in Louisiana was far away and until the fall of Port Hudson, was cut off from the North except by the sea. The public attention was taken up in the States along the border and even our great victory at Port Hudson was eclipsed and looked upon as a consequence of the fall at Vicksburg. But they did a great deal of hard fighting and made hundreds of miles of hard marchings in a climate to which the men were not accustomed.