"Then, by Heaven, we are lost," continued the Adjutant. "Strategy played out and our General of Division out of whiskey. Yes, sir! those mishaps end all further movement of this Grand Army of the Potomac. But when did you hear that?"
"I was in the marquee of the Brigade Commissary when a Sergeant and a couple of privates on duty about Pigey's Head-quarters came in with a demijohn and a note to the Commissary, presenting the compliments of the General commanding Division, and at the same time the cash for four gallons of whiskey. The Captain read it carefully and told the Sergeant to tell the General that he didn't keep a dram-shop. I expected that this reply would make sport, and I concluded to wait awhile and see the thing out. In a few minutes the Sergeant returned, stating that he had not given that reply to the General, through fear, I suppose, but had stated that the Captain had made some excuse. He said further that Pigey said he was entirely out, and must have some.
"'Tell him what I told you,' said the Captain, determinedly. Off the Sergeant started. I waited for his return outside, and asked him how Pigey took the answer. 'Took it?' said he, 'I didn't tell him about the dram-shop, but when he found I had none, he raved like mad—swore he was entirely out—had been since morning, and must and would have some. He d——d the Captain for being a temperance fanatic, and for bringing his fanatical notions into the army; and all the while he paced up and down his marquee
like a tiger at a menagerie. At last he told me that I must return again and tell the Captain that it was a case of absolute necessity, and that he knew that there was a barrel of it among the Commissary stores, and that he must have his four gallons.'
"I followed the Sergeant in, but he could not make it. The Captain had just turned it over to the Hospital.
"So the Sergeant went back again with the empty demijohn. He told me afterwards that the General was so taken aback by his not getting any, that he sat quietly down on his camp stool, ran his fingers through his hair, pulled at his moustache, and then 'I knew,' said the Sergeant, 'that a storm was brewing, and that the General was studying how to do justice to the subject. At length he rose slowly, kicked his hat that had fallen at his feet to one corner of the marquee, d——g it at the same time; d——d me for not getting it any how, and clenching his fists and walking rapidly up and down, d——d the Captain, his Brigadier, and everything belonging to the Brigade, until I thought it a little too hard for a man who had had a Sunday School education in his young days to listen to, and I left him still cursing.'"
"He will court-martial the Captain," said the Colonel, who had entered the tent, "for signal contempt of the Regular Service. I recollect a charge of that kind preferred by a Regular Lieutenant against an Adjutant of the —— Maine, down in the Peninsula. In one of our marches the Adjutant had occasion to ride rapidly by the Regiment to which the Lieutenant belonged. The Lieutenant hailed him—told him to stop. The Adjutant knowing his duty, and that he had no authority to halt him, continued his pace, but found himself for nearly a month afterward in arrest
under a charge of 'Signal contempt for the Regular Service.'"
Sigel's hardy Teutons lined the road in the vicinity of New Baltimore, through which village the route lay on the following day. Part of his corps had some days previously occupied the mountain gaps in the Bull Run range on the left. Other troops, led by a Commander whose strategy was singularly efficacious to keep him out of fights, were passing to the front, leaving a fighting General of undoubted prowess in European and American history, in the rear. Inefficient himself, and perhaps designedly so, his policy could not, with safety to his own reputation, allow of efficiency elsewhere.
That night our Regiment encamped in one of the old pine fields common in Virginia. The softness of the decaying foliage of the pine which covered the ground as a cushion was admirably adapted to repose, and upon it the men rested, while the gentle evening breeze sighed among the boughs above them, as if in sympathy with disappointed hopes and sacrifices made in vain.