Whether induced in his case by an effort to bolster up the courage of his comrades or not, the sentiment has at all times been largely practised upon in the army of the Potomac.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Battle of Fredericksburg—Screwing Courage up to the Sticking Point—Consolations of a Flask—Pigeon-hole Nervousness—Abandonment of Knapsacks—Incidents before, during, and after the Fight.
In this wintry weather, striking tents meant stripping the log huts of the bits of canvas that ordinarily served as the shelter-tents of the soldiers. The long rows of huts thus dismantled,—soldiers at rest in ranks, with full knapsacks and haversacks,—groups of horses saddled and bridled, ready for the rider,—on one of these clear, cold December mornings, indicated that the army was again upon the move. Civilians had been sent back freighted with letters from those soon to see the serious struggle of the field; the sick had been gathered to hospitals nearer home; the musicians had reported to the surgeons, and the men were left, to the sharp notes of sixty rounds of ball cartridge carried in their boxes and knapsacks,—in the plight of the Massachusetts regiment that marched through the mobs of Baltimore, to the music of the cartridge-box, in the first April of the Rebellion.
The time intervening between the removal of McClellan and the battle of Fredericksburg, was a period of uneasy suspense to the nation at large and
its representatives in the field. Dear as the devoted patriotism, the earnest conduct of the Rhode Island Colonel—the hero of the Carolinas and now the leader of the Grand Army of the Potomac—were to the patriotic masses of the nation, the fact of his being an untried man, gave room for gloom and foreboding. With the army at large, the suspense was accompanied by no lack of confidence. The devotion of the Ninth Army Corps for its old commander appeared to have spread throughout the army; and his open, manly countenance, bald head, and unmistakable whiskers, were always greeted with rounds for "Burny." The jealousy of a few ambitious wearers of stars may have been ill concealed upon that morning, only to be disclosed shortly to his detriment; but the earnest citizen-soldiery were eager, under his guidance, to do battle for their country. Time has shown, how much of the misfortune of the subsequent week was attributable to imperfect weeding of McClellanism at Warrenton.
Like a lion at bay, restless in easy view of the hosts of the Rebellious, the army had remained in its camp upon the heights of Stafford until the arrival of the pontoons. For miles along the Rappahannock, the picket of blue had his counterpart in the picket of grey upon the opposite shore. Unremitting labor upon fortifications and earthworks, had greatly increased the natural strength of the amphitheatre of hills in the rear of Fredericksburg. Countless surmises spread in the ranks as to the character and direction of the attack; though the whims of those who uttered them were variant as the reflections of a kaleidoscope. But the sun, that through the pines that morning, shone upon burnished barrels, polished breast-plates, and countenances of brave men,