ON TO WASHINGTON.
After two weeks in that miserable camp at the State capital, we
were ordered to Washington; and into Washington, accordingly, one
sultry September morning, we marched, after a day and a night in
the cars on the way thither. Quite proud we felt, you may be sure,
as we tramped up Pennsylvania Avenue, with our new silk flags
flying, the fifes playing "Dixie," and we ten little drummer-boys
pounding away, awkwardly enough, no doubt, under the lead of a
white-haired old man, who had beaten _his_ drum, nearly fifty
years before, under Wellington, at the battle of Waterloo. We were
green, raw troops, as anybody could tell at a glance; for we were
fair-faced yet, and carried enormous knapsacks. I remember passing
some old troops somewhere near Fourteenth Street, and being
painfully conscious of the difference between them and us. _They_,
I observed, had no knapsacks; a gum-blanket, twisted into a roll,
and slung carelessly over the shoulder, was all the luggage they
carried. Dark, swarthy, sinewy men they were, with torn shoes and
faded uniforms, but with an air of self-possession and endurance
that came only of experience and hardship. They smiled on us as we
passed by,--a grim smile of half pity and half contempt,--just as
we in our turn learned to smile on other new troops a year or two
later.
By some unpardonable mistake, instead of getting into camp
forthwith on the outskirts of the city, whither we had been ordered
for duty at the present, we were marched far out into the country,
under a merciless sun, that soon scorched all the endurance out
of me. It was dusty; it was hot; there was no water; my knapsack
weighed a ton. So that when, after marching some seven miles, our
orders were countermanded, and we faced about to return to the
city again, I thought it impossible I ever should reach it. My
feet moved mechanically, everything along the road was in a misty
whirl; and when at nightfall Andy helped me into the barracks near
the Capitol from which we had started in the morning, I threw
myself, or rather perhaps fell, on the hard floor, and was soon so
soundly asleep that Andy could not rouse me for my cup of coffee
and ration of bread.
I have an indistinct recollection of being taken away next morning
in an ambulance to some hospital, and being put into a clean white
cot. After which, for days, all consciousness left me, and all was
blank before me, save only that, in misty intervals, I saw the kind
faces and heard the subdued voices of Sisters of Mercy,--voices
that spoke to me from far away, and hands that reached out to me
from the other side of an impassable gulf.
Nursed by their tender care back to returning strength, no sooner
was I able to stand on my feet once more than, against their solemn
protest, I asked for my knapsack and drum, and insisted on setting
out forthwith in quest of my regiment, which I found had meanwhile
been scattered by companies about the city, my own company and
another having been assigned to duty at "Soldiers' Home," the
President's summer residence. Although it was but a distance of
three miles or thereabouts, and although I started out in search of
"Soldiers' Home" at noon, so conflicting were the directions given
me by the various persons of whom I asked the road, that it was
nightfall before I reached it. Coming then at the hour of dusk to a
gateway leading apparently into some park or pleasure-ground, and
being informed by the porter at the gate that this was "Soldiers'
Home," I walked about among the trees, in the growing darkness,
in search of the camp of Company D, when, just as I had crossed a
fence, a challenge rang out,--
"Halt! Who goes there?"
"A friend."
"Advance, friend, and give the countersign!"
"Hello, Elias!" said I, peering through the bushes, "is that you?"
"That isn't the countersign, friend. You'd better give the
countersign, or you're a dead man!"
Saying which, Elias sprang back in true Zouave style, with his
bayonet fixed and ready for a lunge at me.
"Now, Elias," said I, "you know me just as well as I know myself,
and you know I haven't the countersign; and if you're going to kill
me, why, don't stand there crouching like a cat ready to spring on
a mouse, but up and at it like a man. Don't keep me here in such
dreadful suspense."
"Well, friend without the countersign, I'll call up the corporal,
and he may kill you,--you're a dead man, any way!" Then he sang
out,--
"Corporal of the guard, post number three!"
From post to post it rang along the line, now shrill and high, now
deep and low: "Corporal of the guard, post number three!" "Corporal
of the guard, post number three!"
Upon which up comes the corporal of the guard on a full trot, with
his gun at a right-shoulder shift, and saying,--
"Well, what's up?"
"Man trying to break my guard."
"Where is he?"
"Why there, beside that bush."
"Come along, you there; you'll be shot for a spy to-morrow morning
at nine o'clock."
"All right, Mr. Corporal, I'm ready."
Now all this was fine sport; for Corporal Harter and Elias were
both of my company, and knew me quite as well as I knew them;
but they were bent on having a little fun at my expense, and the
corporal had marched me off some distance toward headquarters,
beyond the ravine, when again the call rang along the line,--
"Corporal of the guard, post number three!" "Corporal of the guard,
post number three!"
Back the corporal trotted me to Elias.
"Well, what in the mischief's up now?"
"Another fellow trying to break my guard, corporal."
"Well, where is he? Trot him out! We'll have a grand execution in
the morning! The more the merrier, you know; and 'Long live the
Union!'"
"I'm sorry, corporal, but the fact is I killed this chap myself.
I caught him trying to climb over the gate there, and he wouldn't
stop nor give the countersign, and so I up and at him, and ran my
bayonet through him, and there he is!"
And sure enough, there he was,--a big fat 'possum!
"All right, Elias; you're a brave soldier. I'll speak to the
colonel about this, and you shall have two stripes on your sleeve
one of these days."
And so, with the 'possum by the tail and me by the shoulder, he
marched us off to headquarters, where, the 'possum being thrown
down on the ground, and I handed over to the tender mercies of the
captain, it was ordered that--
"This young man should be taken down to Andy's tent, and a supper
cooked, and a bed made for him there; and that henceforth and
hereafter he should beat reveille at daybreak, retreat at sundown,
tattoo at nine p.m., and lights out a half-hour later."
Nothing, however, was said about the execution of spies in the
morning, although it was duly ordained that the 'possum, poor
thing, should be roasted for dinner the next day.
Never was there a more pleasant camp than ours,--there on that
green hillside across the ravine from the President's summer
residence. We had light guard duty to do, and that of a kind we
esteemed a most high honor; for it was no less than that of being
special guards for President Lincoln. But the good President, we
were told, although he loved his soldiers as his own children, did
not like being guarded. Often did I see him enter his carriage
before the hour appointed for his morning departure for the White
House, and drive away in haste, as if to escape from the irksome
escort of a dozen cavalry-men, whose duty it was to guard his
carriage between our camp and the city. Then when the escort rode
up to the door, some ten or fifteen minutes later, and found that
the carriage had already gone, wasn't there a clattering of hoofs
and a rattling of scabbards as they dashed out past the gate and
down the road to overtake the great and good President, in whose
heart was "charity for all, and malice toward none!"
Boy as I was, I could not but notice how pale and haggard the
President looked as he entered his carriage in the morning, or
stepped down from it in the evening, after a weary day's work in
the city; and no wonder, either, for those September days of 1862
were the dark, perhaps the darkest, days of the war. Many a mark
of favor and kindness did we receive from the President's family.
Delicacies, such as we were strangers to then, and would be for a
long time to come, found their way from Mrs. Lincoln's hand to our
camp on the green hillside; while little Tad, the President's son,
was a great favorite with the boys, fond of the camp, and delighted
with the drill.
One night, when all but the guards on their posts were wrapped in
great-coats and sound asleep in the tents, I felt some one shake me
roughly by the shoulder, and call:
"Harry! Harry! Get up quick and beat the long roll; we're going to
be attacked. Quick, now!"
Groping about in the dark for my drum and sticks, I stepped out
into the company street, and beat the loud alarm, which, waking the
echoes, brought the boys out of their tents in double-quick time,
and set the whole camp in an uproar.
"What's up, fellows?"
"Fall in, Company D!" shouted the orderly.
"Fall in, men," shouted the captain; "we're going to be attacked at
once!"
Amid the confusion of so sudden a summons at midnight, there was
some lively scrambling for guns, bayonets, cartridge-boxes, and
clothes.
"I say, Bill, you've got my coat on!"
"Where's my cap?"
"Andy, you scamp, you've got my shoes!"
"Fall in, men, quick; no time to look after shoes now. Take your
arms and fall in."
And so, some shoeless, others hatless, and all only half dressed,
we formed in line and marched out and down the road at double-quick
for a mile; then halted; pickets were thrown out; an advance of
the whole line through the woods was made among tangled bushes and
briers, and through marshes, until, as the first early streaks
of dawn were shooting up in the eastern sky, our orders were
countermanded, and we marched back to camp, to find--that the whole
thing was a ruse, planned by some of the officers for the purpose
of testing our readiness for work at any hour. After that, we slept
with our shoes on.
But poor old Peter Blank,--a man who should never have enlisted,
for he was as afraid of a gun as Robinson Crusoe's man Friday,--poor
old Peter was the butt for many a joke the next day. For amid
the night's confusion, and in the immediate prospect, as he
supposed, of a deadly encounter with the enemy, so alarmed did
he become that he at once fell to--praying! Out of consideration
for his years and piety, the captain had permitted him to remain
behind as a guard for the camp in our absence, in which capacity
he did excellent service, excellent service! But oh, when we sat
about our fires the next morning, frying our steaks and cooking our
coffee, poor Peter was the butt of all the fun, and was cruelly
described by the wag of the company as "the man that had a brave
heart, but a most cowardly pair of legs!"