CHAPTER VIII.
The Reconnoissance—Shepherdstown—Punch and Patriotism—Private Tom on West Point and Southern Sympathy—The Little Irish Corporal on John Mitchel—A Skirmish—Hurried Dismounting of the Dutch Doctor and Chaplain—Battle of Falling Waters not intended—Story of the Little Irish Corporal—Patterson's Folly, or Treason.
An old German writer has said that "six months are sufficient to accustom an individual to any change in life." As he might fairly be supposed to have penned this for German readers and with the fixed habits and feelings of a German, if true at all, it ought to hold good the world over. As we are more particularly interested in camps at present, we venture the assertion that six weeks will make a soldier weary of any camp. With our Sharpsburg camp, however, perhaps this feeling was assisted by the consciousness so frequently manifested in the conversation of the men that the army should be on the move.
Hundreds of relatives and friends had taken advantage of the proximity of the camp to a railroad station to pay us a visit, and with them of course came eatables—not in the army rations—and delicacies of all kinds prepared by thoughtful heads and willing hands at home. Not unfrequently the marquees
of the officers were occupied by their families, who, in their enjoyment of the novelties of camp life, the drills, and dress parades of the regiment, treasured up for home consumption, brilliant recollections of the sunny side of war. All this, to say nothing of the scenery, the shade of the wood, that from the peculiar position of the camp, so gratefully from early noon extended itself, until at the hour for dress parade the regiment could come to the usual "parade rest" entirely in the shade. But the roads were good, the weather favorable, the troops effective, and the inactivity was a "ghost that would not down" in the sight of men daily making sacrifices for the speedy suppression of the Rebellion. The matter was constantly recurring for discussion in the shelter tent as well as in the marquees, in all its various forms. A great nation playing at war when its capital was threatened, and its existence endangered. A struggle in which inert power was upon one side, and all the earnestness of deadly hatred and blind fanaticism upon the other. An enemy vulnerable in many ways, and no matter how many loyal lives were lost, money expended by the protraction of the war, but to be assailed in one. But why multiply? Ten thousand reasons might be assigned why a military leader, without an aggressive policy of warfare, unwilling to employ fully the resources committed to him, should not succeed in the suppression of a Rebellion. The nation suffered much in the treason that used its high position to cloak the early rebel movement to arms, and delayed our own preparations; but more in the incapacity or half-heartedness that made miserable use of the rich materials so spontaneously furnished.
In the improvement of the Regiment the delay at
the Sharpsburg camp was not lost. The limited ground was well used, and Company and Battalion drills steadily persevered in, brought the Regiment to a proficiency rarely noticed in regiments much longer in the field.