Robinson and I, of course, had to foot it, but in course of time we also landed in camp, much to the surprise of our comrades, who thought the enemy had us. Thus terminated ingloriously the well-planned expedition of Company Q.
In about ten days the brigade came back from the West Virginia expedition, and Company Q received the Sixth Regiment with open arms. Just what the expedition accomplished I am not able to say, but there is one little incident connected with it that has lingered lovingly in my memory to this day.
Every mess had in it a forager; that is, one skilled in the art of picking up delicacies. At least we called them such, as this term was applied to anything edible above hardtack and salt pork. We had such a one in our mess, and he was hard to beat. His name was Fauntleroy Neal. He was a close friend of mine. We called him Faunt.
Whenever he went on an expedition he always came back loaded. As he was with the brigade in West Virginia, we knew that when he returned (if he did return) he would bring back something good, and he did. I cannot remember all the things he had strapped to his saddle, but one thing looms up before my mind now as big as a Baltimore skyscraper. It was about half a bushel of genuine grain coffee, unroasted. There was also sugar to sweeten it. Grains of coffee in the South during the Civil War were as scarce as grains of gold, and when toasting time came and the lid was lifted to stir the coffee, it is said that the aroma from it spread through the trees and over the fields for many miles around. I forgot the long, weary march on foot back up the valley, forgot the loss of my horse, and really felt as if I had been fully compensated for any inconvenience that had come to me from the ill-starred tramp of Company Q.
But spring had fully come, the roads were dry, and the time for action was here.
Hooker, at the head of 120,000 Northern soldiers, was again crossing the Rappahannock, near Fredericksburg, to lock horns with Lee and Jackson.
Hooker had superseded Burnside in command of the Union army. They called him "fighting Joe."
Hooker handled his army the first two or three days with consummate skill, and at one stage of his maneuvers he felt confident that he had out-generaled Lee and Jackson. He believed they were in full retreat, and so informed the Washington Government. But he was doomed to a terrible disappointment. What Hooker took to be a retreat of the Confederates was simply a change of front, which was followed up by Jackson executing another one of his bold flank movements, the most brilliant of his brief career, the result of which was Hooker's defeat. The entire Union army was thrown into such confusion that it was compelled to retreat across the river, after sustaining heavy losses in killed and wounded.
The New Standard Encyclopedia gives Hooker's army as 130,000; Lee's, 60,000. Hooker's losses, 18,000; Lee's, 13,000.
Perhaps no general on either side during the entire war felt more keenly his defeat than did Hooker on this occasion. For awhile everything seemed to be going his way, when suddenly the tide turned, and he saw his vast army in a most critical situation, and apparently at the mercy of his opponent.