We are camped just outside the works around Yorktown, on a plateau overlooking the York river and, far off to the east, the blue waters of Chesapeake Bay—on the whole, a very pleasant location. The first night we were here we had no tents, but they came the next day, although not as many as we needed, and we are, consequently, somewhat crowded. It was the intention to give Jess. Dewey and I a tent together, but we will have to wait. But at the rate our subs are deserting there will be tents enough and room enough before long. About a hundred have made tracks, so far.
Yesterday the Fourth U. S. Colored Regiment left here. One of the officers went out of this company. They are going to Point Lookout. The fellow I would have gone to Washington with if things had not shaped themselves to my liking in the regiment, is back with a captain’s commission. You see what I escaped. Col. Bailey tells me I ought to go up anyway, whether I accept or not—it would help pass the time away. But I tell him I am getting along very comfortably as I am, that I can enjoy myself better with the regiment than I could loafing around Washington, and that if I had wanted a commission I could have had one long, long ago. I am quartering now in the cook-tent, and have very good accommodations. It is understood we are going to Williamsburg soon. Hen. Pillsbury says Col. Bailey is determined to go home when the old men do, and most of the officers are of the same mind. We have just drawn rations of cracked pease, beans, rice, smoked sides, &c., so there are no signs of immediate starvation.
CXL
Yorktown, Va., April 13, 1864.
NOT a bit of mail have we had, until yesterday, since our arrival here. Then George Colby came down from Point Lookout, bringing what had accumulated there.
We are expecting to have a military execution of a deserter this afternoon. He is one of our subs, going under the name of John Egin. He was taken while trying to make his way into the rebel lines, was tried yesterday by court martial, and condemned to be shot today between the hours of five and six o’clock in the afternoon. He was making for the rebel lines when he met a man in a gray uniform, and he gave himself dead away. He didn’t know that a gray uniform between the lines was pretty sure to cover one of our scouts, so he unbosomed himself, and was then about-faced and marched back to Yorktown.
Just outside our camp is the grave of a man who was executed a little over a month ago. He was on guard over a prisoner, at Williamsburg, whom he allowed to escape, carrying important information to the rebels. Most of the large number who have deserted since we got here have been picked up at one place or another. Their utter ignorance of the geography of the country has in many instances led to their undoing. It is probable that several of them will meet the same fate that has been decreed for Egin. The second of Gordon’s precious subs, made corporals to spite the old men, made tracks day before yesterday, but was picked up and brought back yesterday. When the bulk of the old men are discharged, and the subs have all run away, and most of the officers have been mustered out, where will the glorious old Second Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers be? I am glad I have not got to stay and serve any longer, for it can never again be the old Second except in name.
Close to our camp is a contraband settlement familiarly known as “Slab City.” There are several hundred houses. It is laid out in streets, the shanties, built of slabs, split logs, &c., averaging about half the size of an ordinary New Hampshire woodshed. Jess, and I have explored it from one end to the other, and it was as good as a circus. They have quite a corps of teachers, both white and black, and there is more religion to the square inch than in any other part of the United States. There are stores, with little stocks of goods that wouldn’t inventory twenty dollars apiece, and the signs are fine examples of phonetic spelling. Here is one: “GROSERIS STOOR.” And on two that we saw appeared the magic word “GROSEYS”—the orthography evidently dictated from the same fount of knowledge. The mechanical execution was on a par with the spelling.