The dinner hour having arrived, the pickets unanimously conclude to set aside Uncle Sam’s homely fare, and take advantage of the enlarged facilities of entertainment afforded by the village. Accordingly they adjourn to one of the boarding-houses, kept by a man of secession proclivities, whose principles, however, do not interfere with his untiring efforts to please. Such houses of refreshment, where a civilized meal could be obtained, situated as they were here and there along the picket-line, added much to the enjoyment of these brief excursions from camp. Our duties were not very onerous, requiring the attention of each man two hours out of every six, and consisted in seeing that no one passed along the road, or appeared in the vicinity, without proper authority. In good weather, the two days of picket duty, occurring once a fortnight, were quite agreeable; but if stormy, they afforded good material for the grumbling fraternity.
In view of the approach of winter, and the probability of remaining in our present location for some time, it was thought best to make corresponding preparations. Pine logs, with considerable labor, were cut and brought in from the neighboring forest, and soon Camp Tuttle began to present an air of comfort positively inviting. But after only a brief enjoyment of our improved quarters, and as if to remind us of the uncertainty always attending the soldier’s life, orders came, November eighteenth, for Company H to strike tents, pack up, and march over to Hall’s Hill, there to clear up a place for the regimental encampment. Arriving on the hill in a pelting rain, huge fires were built of the brush and stumps which covered the ground, and by evening our tents were up, and we were as comfortable as circumstances would allow. Hearing of several deserted encampments about a mile distant, on Miner’s and Upton’s Hills, many parties went out the next morning to secure anything which might add to their convenience. A large barren plain was covered far and wide with the huts and débris of a portion of McClellan’s army, which encamped here in the winter of 1862. The whole presented a very curious and suggestive sight. Meanwhile, orders came to strike tents and rejoin the regiment. It appeared that all the regiments in the vicinity were ordered to prepare for a rapid march. The Army of the Potomac had but recently crossed the river, after the battle of Antietam, in pursuit of Lee, and the enemy were said to be threatening General Sigel, in command at Centreville. In view of this state of affairs, the reserve, in the defences of Washington, was called upon to be ready for any emergency. Returning to camp, we found the men earnestly canvassing the nature of the contemplated march. The orders, however, were countermanded in the evening, perhaps in consequence of a severe storm, which continued for several days.
[CHAPTER II.]
TO THE FRONT.
The soldier who is untried in the fearful ordeal of war looks forward with a kind of adventurous excitement to the time when he shall cross swords with the enemy; and especially if his heart is bound up in the cause, and his motives lie deeper than mere love of adventure, he desires to stand at the post of duty, though it be in the deadly charge, and at the cannon’s mouth.
At length the last day of November, a beautiful Sabbath, came, and with it marching orders. All attention was now concentrated upon the movement to take place the next day, at nine o’clock. The cooks were busy preparing rations for the march; the men were arranging their traps in the most portable form, and all looked forward with eager interest to the new scenes before us. At the appointed time, on the following morning, the Twenty-seventh, with the other regiments in the brigade, began the march for Washington, leaving our comparatively commodious A tents standing. Henceforth, shelter-tents, and for much of the time no tents at all, were to be our covering. Our final destination was all a mystery, until, as the days advanced, conjecture was enabled, with some probability, to fix upon Fredericksburg. The march across Chain Bridge, through Georgetown and Washington, and down the Potomac, fifteen miles, consumed the first day, and that night a tired set slept beneath their shelter-tents, nestling in the woods by the road-side.
By eight o’clock, December second, we were again in motion, and before sundown accomplished the appointed distance of twenty miles, through a pleasant country, divided into large and apparently well-cultivated plantations. Sambo’s glittering ivory and staring eyes gleamed from many gateways, greeting us half suspiciously. One young colored boy concluded he had been beaten quite long enough by his master, and not liking the prospect before him if he remained in slavery, thought best to join the column, and march to freedom. In anticipation of some such proceedings on the part of the colored population, the planters of that region patrolled the roads on horseback, watching our ranks as we filed past, to see if some luckless contraband were not harbored therein.
The third day brought us within three miles of Port Tobacco, and without standing on ceremony, we encamped for the night on the grounds of a secessionist planter, and availed ourselves of his abundant store of hay and straw. December fourth, we passed through the town—a very ordinary, shabby-looking place, whose secession population hardly deigned to glance at us, except from behind closed shutters.
Thus far the weather had been delightful, but the fifth day of our march, and the last on the Maryland side of the Potomac, opened rather inauspiciously, and by the time we reached the river bank at Liverpool Point, a cold rain-storm had set in, in which we were obliged to stand a couple of hours awaiting our turn to be ferried across to Acquia Landing. At length the rain changed into driving snow, and when we arrived at the Landing, the surrounding hills were white with the generous deposit. The village at Acquia Creek, after being evacuated sundry times, had risen again from the ashes of several burnings to become the base of supplies for Burnside’s army before Fredericksburg. Busy carpenters were rearing storehouses, eventually to take their turn at conflagration, and the offing was full of vessels of every description, loaded with stores to be transferred by rail to Falmouth.