I saw Mr. Covode and the other friends, to whom I related my experience with Mr. Stanton and Mr. Watson, and, at the same time, declared my intention to leave the city for the front, and enter the army as a private soldier, and work my way up to position by meritorious service in front of the enemy, instead of in the rear.
The day following, before I could get an opportunity to again see General Stager in regard to his proposal, or take any action myself, Mr. Covode sent for me. When I reached his room he said, in his blunt way:
"If you are bound to be in the field, I'll give you a letter to General Haupt, who has charge of the railroad between Fredericksburg and Aquia Creek, and he will give you something to do to keep you busy down there till we can get something fixed up here."
I eagerly accepted this proposal; it was not what I wanted exactly, but it admitted of my going to the front, and that, too, in an official position, wherein I could be on hand and, unmolested, see everything that was being done. I had known General Haupt well, as the accomplished Chief Engineer of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and Mr. Covode had been assured by him, it seems, that he would be delighted to have me in his Military Railroad Service, as I had experience in that direction in Mr. Scott's service.
We were going to rebuild that road right into Richmond the next week, and I consoled myself with the thought that, if I did not reënter Richmond on a horse as an officer, that I might get there all the same on a locomotive.
I was to be paid a good salary and expenses. All my friends thought it just splendid, and I imagine now, though I didn't think so at the time, that the position was created for me just to prevent my getting into trouble again. In a few days I took a morning steamer, armed with an official pass and a bundle of good clothing, and sailed with the greatest anticipations of quickly seeing Richmond. We reached Aquia Creek in a few hours—this, as all the boys will know, was then the leading place or connecting point between the steamers and the railroads to Richmond. After strolling about there for an hour, I got aboard the first train, which was made up of open truck cars, and we rolled over the ten or twelve miles past the straggling camps of our forces then thereabouts, crossing the high and hastily-improvised trestle of bridges that had been built by "sojers," in the place of those destroyed.
CHAPTER XXV.
GENO—FREDERICKSBURG—A CHAPTER OF WAR HISTORY NOT IN The Century PAPERS.
It will be remembered that, on a previous occasion, I had made an entrée into the town of Fredericksburg, on the bare back of an old horse, on the morning in August after the night of horror in which I was pursued by Rebels, suffering from the attack of bloodhounds.