As the battery came near the spot where we were standing, and could be plainly seen, I exclaimed:
"Why, Andy, I don't believe those dogs can bark at all! Don't you see? They are wooden logs covered over with black gum-blankets and mounted on the front-wheels of wagons, and—as sure as you're alive—it's our quartermaster on his gray horse in command of the battery!"
"Well, I declare!" said Andy, with a look of mingled surprise and disappointment.
There was no disputing the fact. Dummies they were, those cannon which Andy had so exultingly declared were to take the Johnnies through the brush; and we began at once to suspect that this whole mud-march was only a miserable ruse, or feint of war, got up expressly for the purpose of deceiving the enemy and making him believe that the whole Union army was there in full force, when such was by no means the case. So there was not going to be any battle after all, then? Such indeed, as we learned a little later in the day, was the true state of things. Nevertheless the pioneers went on with their work of putting down the pontoon-boats for a bridge, and our gallant quartermaster, on his bobtail gray, with drawn sword, and shouting out his commands like a veritable major-general, swept by us with his battery of wooden guns, and then away out into the field like a whirlwind, apparently bent on the most bloody work imaginable. Now the battery would dash up and unlimber and get into position here; then away on a gallop across the field and go into position there; while the quartermaster would meanwhile swing his sword and shout himself hoarse, as if in the very crisis of a battle.
It was, then, all, alas! a ruse, and there wouldn't be any battle after all! I think the general feeling among the men was one of disappointment, when about nine o'clock that night we were all withdrawn from the riverside under cover of darkness, and bivouacked in the woods to our rear, where we were ordered to make as many and as large fires as we could, so as to attract the enemy's attention, and make him believe that the whole Army of the Potomac was concentrating at that point; whereas the truth was that, instead of making any movement thirty miles below Fredericksburg, the Union army, ten days later, crossed the river thirty miles above Fredericksburg, and met the enemy at Chancellorsville.
The Quartermaster's Triumph.
But I have never forgotten our gallant quartermaster, and what a fine appearance he made as the commanding officer of a battery of artillery. It was an amusing sight; for the reader must remember that a quartermaster, having to do only with army supplies, was a non-combatant, that is to say, he did no fighting, and in most cases "stayed by the stuff" among his army wagons, which were usually far enough to the rear in time of battle. Thinking of this little episode on our first mud-march, there comes to my mind a conversation I recently had with a gentleman, my neighbor, who was also a quartermaster in the Union army.
"I was down in Virginia on business last spring," said the ex-quartermaster, "in the neighborhood of Warrenton. (You remember Warrenton? Fine country down there.) And I found the people very kind and friendly, and inclined to forget the late unpleasantness. Well, one man came up to me, and says he: