How did we spend our time in winter quarters, do you ask? Well, there was always enough to do, you may be sure, and often it was work of the very hardest sort. Two days in the week the regiment went out on picket, and while there got but little sleep and suffered much from exposure. When they were not on picket, all the men not needed for camp guard had to drill. It was nothing but drill, drill, drill: company drill, regimental drill, brigade drill, and once even division drill. Our regiment, as I have said, was a skirmish regiment, and the skirmish-drill is no light work, let me tell you. Many an evening the men came in more dead than alive after skirmishing over the country for miles around, all the afternoon. Reveille and roll-call at five o'clock in the morning, guard mount at nine, company drill from ten to twelve, regimental drill from two to four, dress-parade at five, tattoo and lights out at nine at night, with continual practice on the drum for us drummer-boys—so our time passed away.
CHAPTER V.
A GRAND REVIEW.
On a certain day near the beginning of April, 1863, we were ordered to prepare for a grand review of our corps. President Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln, Master Tad Lincoln (who used to play among our tents at "Soldiers' Home"), and some of the Cabinet officers, were coming down to look us over and see what promise we gave for the campaign soon to open.
Those who have never seen a grand review of well-drilled troops in the field have never seen one of the finest and most inspiring sights the eyes of man can behold. I wish I could impart to my readers some faint idea of the thrilling scene which must have presented itself to the eyes of the beholders when, on the morning of the ninth day of April, 1863, our gallant First Army Corps, leaving its camps among the hills, assembled on a wide, extended plain for the inspection of our illustrious visitors.
As regiment after regiment, and brigade after brigade, came marching out from the surrounding hills and ravines, with flags gayly flying, bands and drum corps making such music as was enough to stir the blood in the heart of the most indifferent to a quicker pulse, and well-drilled troops that marched in the morning sunlight with a step as steady as the stroke of machinery,—ah! it was a sight to be seen but once in a century! And when those twenty thousand men were all at last in line, with the artillery in position off to one side on the hill, and ready to fire their salute, it seemed well worth the President's while to come all the way from Washington to look at them.
Waiting to be reviewed by the President.
But the President was a long, long time in coming. The sun, mounting fast toward noon, began to be insufferably hot. One hour, two hours, three hours were passing away, when, at last, far off through a defile between the hills, we caught sight of a great cloud of dust.