CHAPTER XX.
ARMY ROAD AND BRIDGE BUILDERS.
“A line of black, which bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.”
Longfellow.
If there is one class of men in this country who more than all others should appreciate spacious and well graded highways, or ready means of transit from one section into another, that class is the veterans of the Union Army; for those among them who “hoofed it” from two to four years in Rebeldom travelled more miles across country in that period than they did on regularly constituted thoroughfares. Now through the woods, now over the open, then crossing a swamp, or wading a river of varying depth, here tearing away a fence obstructing the march, there filling a ditch with rails to smooth the passage of the artillery,—in fact, “short cuts” were so common and popular that the men endured the obstacles they often presented with the utmost good-nature, knowing that every rood of travel thus saved meant fewer foot-blisters and an earlier arrival in camp.
But there was a portion of the army which could not often indulge in short cuts, which must “find a way or make it,” or have it made for them by others; and as some time and much skill and labor were necessary in laying out and completing such a way in an efficient manner, a body of men was enlisted for the exclusive purpose of doing this kind of work. Such a body was the Engineer Corps, often called the Sappers and Miners of the army; but so little sapping and mining was done, and that little mainly by the fighting forces, I shall speak of this body of men as Engineers—the name which, I believe, they prefer.
In the Army of the Potomac this corps was composed of the Fifteenth and Fiftieth New York regiments of volunteers and a battalion of regulars comprising three companies. They started out with McClellan in the Peninsular Campaign, and from that time till the close of the war were identified with the movements of this army. These engineers went armed as infantry for purposes of self-defence only, for fighting was not their legitimate business, nor was it expected of them. There were emergencies in the history of the army when they were drawn up in line of battle. Such was the case with a part of them at least at Antietam, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness, but, so far as I can learn, they were never actively engaged.
CORDUROYING.