The geography of our country tells us, that the Ohio is a broad river;
that, we are willing to admit, and rather than be thought narrow minded,
we are willing to say that it is a beautiful river, but when the writer,
with his heart filled with patriotism, entrusted himself on its bosom,
it was blessed with a remarkable shallowness, at any rate our boats kept
getting fast on sand bars, shoals, mud or something else, so often, that
it would have been no trouble for us all to have crawled off and footed
it down the stream, or back home, but that kind of a boat ride would
have had its inconveniences, and that was not what we had come for, so
like 'Cassabianca,' whom we used to read about in our school days, we
clung to the "burning deck." "Down the river, down the river, down the
Ohio," we crawled along, until night fall, when for prudence sake our
captain steered into the bank and tied up for the night. Can it be
possible, we think, while sitting here penning these lines with peace
all around us, that between the cities of Cincinnati and Louisville a
steamboat Captain was afraid, after night, to take his craft for fear of
enemies? Such, however, was the case, and history will bear record to
the generations yet to come, that in the nineteenth century this grand
river was navigable only in the day time with comparative safety. But we
do not want to let our pen run away with our own private thoughts; we do
not want to let our individual feelings get the upper hand, we are
endeavoring to write a history, and we want it to be correct; we want it
to be a history that each and every member of the 125th Ills. can leave
behind him when he "strikes his tent" for the last time; a history that
he may leave to those who come after him, that in the terrible war which
the Nation went through, when right against wrong prevailed, that he was
a partaker in the struggle. What better, handsomer, nobler record can we
leave to our posterity?
Our trip down the river was not prolific of any incident that would be
noticeable here, suffice it to say that we awoke in the morning to hear
the chug! chug! of the boat and knew that we were moving, and that we
had not been interfered with during the night. We arrived at Louisville
that evening and disembarked on the river bank; but little did we think
as we stepped off the boat that there, on the banks of the Ohio, we were
to receive our first lesson of what a soldier's life would be. Our past
experience we thought had been terrible, but the corn-stalk huts which
we had occupied, and laughed at, would have been welcome to us now. The
stones on the river bank made our couch, and the canopy of heaven our
covering. But for fear that history may not give us our right place, and
to show that our hearts beat in unison, we will mention that here it was
we met the army of General Buell. It arrived in Louisville the same
night that we did, fresh from the battle fields of Corinth and Iuka, and
had come to the relief of the endangered city. Northern manhood,
Northern "grit," was too much for the sluggish blood of Bragg's army,
and our boys beat them in the race and saved the city of Louisville.
Never can those who witnessed it, forget that sight. Here they came,
neighbor boys, old friends, who had left home only a few months prior to
us; covered with the dust and stain of travel, no baggage, no
impediments, nothing but their trusty Enfields, and sixty rounds of
ammunition in their cartridge boxes, with a blanket to each man rolled
up in a coil, and fastened around him, this was all they had, while we,
in our clean, blue clothes, with thoughts of our having gone through
with an awful experience, met these lads. The impression the writer
received that night as we witnessed these boys come marching in, was
like the opinion that was expressed by some one in our Regiment: "Boys,
we don't know anything about soldiering." Morning found us asleep on the
banks of the Ohio, with the river rolling past us, down to that country
which never before, in the history of the Nation, had been forbidden
ground to any of her sons. But to that land we were bound, and if we
remained on the banks of the Ohio we would never get there, so when the
bugle sounded the call to "fall in," we were ready to obey the signal.
The morning opened bright and cheerful, but towards noon the sun was
overcast by clouds, and a drizzling rain set in; but it made no
difference to us; of course they could not find lodgings for us _that_
night, but now they had awakened to a sense of their duty, and we were
going to some hotel to put up. Yes, certainly that was what was the
matter, and we fell into ranks with glee. Our hotel was a cattle pen in
the suburbs of the city, and into it we marched.
[Illustration]