First March.
On the first of January, 1862, early in the morning, began the first in the long series of the weary, footsore, leg-tiring, patience-testing and body-exhausting marches which were to be taken in the coming three and a half years.
The morning was cold—cold enough to do full justice to the time of the season and the season of the year, what we characterize a bitter day, and a bitter experience was it for the boys who were yet to learn the attendants of war. A driving wind, with a fall of snow, made what would have been a more than uncomfortable bivouac for the night, were it not that to the weary traveller there is not less of comfort in stopping than in going. It was the less for the greater hardship, and the freezing could go on through the night unaccompanied by the strain of the march.
Clear Spring had been left behind through the day, and the stop at night was without tents.
Arrival at the "Front."
Nine o'clock of the 2d marked the Regiment again on the way, and on the mountain top at Fairview was had the first sight of secession land, the Dixie of the song, and then on to Hancock, by the bank of the Potomac, the terminal of the order that initiated the war service that started active, and on that line developed, continuously, to a fulness sufficient to meet the hardiest speculations of the most radical expectant.
The National Pike furnished the roadway from Hagerstown to Hancock.
The arrival at Hancock was in the evening of the 2d. The Regiment was put in quarters just vacated by the 13th Massachusetts, which had been passed on its way down the river in canal boats.
The day of arrival at Hancock was in the ninth month of a War that had not been lacking in vigor of movement on the part of the foe which the Government had encountered, and yet so little of system had been attained, and so little of war wisdom sought after, that a regiment of soldiers was travelled from Harrisburg without arms, and that to a point just across a river, narrow and shallow, from where lie the forces whose movements the regiment had been sent to check.
On the 3d, the guns were handed out. They were of the old Belgian make, containing all the tallow that the barrel would accommodate in addition to the several cartridges necessary to be supplied before the moistened powder could be induced to ignite. When they were carried over into Virginia, and the warmth of the fire reached the explosive grain, you can think now, as you realized then, that even the Belgian was not built to throw more than one ball at the same fire without repairs to one or the other—the gun or the man.