"JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME."
We had just come out of what is known as the "Second Hatcher's Run"
fight, somewhere about the middle of February, 1865. The company,
which was now reduced to a mere handful of men, was standing about
a smoking fire in the woods, discussing the engagement and relating
adventures, when some one came in from brigade headquarters,
shouting the following message: "Say, boys, good news! They told me
over at headquarters that we are to be sent North to relieve the
'regulars' somewhere."
Ha! ha! ha! That was an old story,--too old to be good, and too
good to be true. For a year and more we had been hearing that same
good news,--"Going to Baltimore," "Going to Washington," and so
forth, and we always ended with going into battle instead, or off
on some long raid.
So we didn't much heed the tidings; we were too old birds to be
caught with chaff.
But, in spite of our incredulity, the next morning we were marched
down to General Grant's branch of the Petersburg Railway, loaded on
box-cars, and carried to City Point, where we at once embarked on
two huge steamers, which we found awaiting us.
For two days and nights we were cooped up in those miserable boats.
We had no fire, and we suffered from the cold. We had no water for
thirty-six hours, and, of course, no coffee; and what is life to a
soldier without coffee? All were sea-sick, too, for the weather was
rough. And so, what with hunger and thirst, cold and sea-sickness,
we landed one evening at Baltimore more dead than alive.
No sooner were we well down the gangplank than the crowd of apple
and pie women that stood on the wharf made quick sales and large
profits. Then we marched away to a "soldiers' retreat" and were
fed. Fed! We never tasted so grand a supper as that before or
since--"salt horse," dry bread and coffee! The darkies that
carried around the great cans of the latter were kept pretty busy
for a while, I can tell you; and they must have thought:
"Dem sodjers, dar, must be done gone starved, dat's sartin. Nebber
seed sech hungry men in all my bawn days,--nebber!"
After supper we were lodged in a great upper room of a large
building, having bunks ranged around the four sides of it, and
in the middle an open space, which was soon turned to account;
for one of the boys strung up his fiddle, which he had carried on
his knapsack for full two years, on every march and through every
battle we had been in, and with the help of this we proceeded to
celebrate our late "change of front" with music and dancing until
the small hours of the morning.
[Illustration: THE CHARGE ON THE CAKES.]
Down through the streets of Baltimore we march the next day, with
our blackened and tattered flags a-flying, mustering only one
hundred and eighty men out of the one thousand who marched through
those same streets nearly three years before. We find a train
of cars awaiting us, which we gladly enter, making no complaint
that we are stowed away in box or cattle cars, instead of
passenger coaches, for we understand that Uncle Sam cannot afford
any luxuries for his boys, and we have been used to roughing
it. Nor do we complain, either, that we have no fire, although
we have just come out of a warm climate, and the snow is a foot
deep at Baltimore, and is getting deeper every hour as we steam
away northward. Toward evening we pass Harrisburg, giving "three
cheers for Andy Curtin," as the State Capitol comes in sight.
Night draws on, and the boys one by one begin to bunk down on the
floor, wrapped in their great-coats and blankets. But I cannot lie
down or sleep until we have passed a certain way-station, from
which it is but two miles across the hills to my home. I stand at
the door of the car, shivering and chilled to the bone, patiently
waiting and watching as village after village rushes by in the
bright moonlight, until at long last we reach the well-known little
station at the hour of midnight. And then, as I look across the
snow-clad moonlit hills, toward the old red farmhouse where father
and mother and sisters are all sleeping soundly, with never a
thought of my being so near, I fall to thinking, and wondering,
and wishing with a bounding heart, as the train dashes on between
the mountain and the river, and bears me again farther and farther
away from home. Then rolling myself up in my blanket, and drawing
the cape of my overcoat about my head, I lie down on the car floor
beside Andy, and am soon sound asleep.
The following evening we landed at Elmira, New York, where we were
at once put on garrison duty. _Why_ we had been taken out of the
field and sent to a distant Northern city, we never could discover,
and we had seen too much service to think of asking questions which
the mysterious pigeon-holes of the War Department alone could
answer. But we always deemed it a pity that we were not left in the
field until the great civil war came to an end with the surrender
of Lee at Appomattox, and that we had no part in the final
gathering of the troops at Washington, where the grand old Army of
the Potomac passed in review for the last time.
But so it was, that after some months of monotonous garrison duty
at Elmira, the great and good news came at last one day that
peace had been declared, and that the great war was over! My young
readers can scarcely imagine what joy instantly burst forth all
over the land. Bells were rung all day long, bonfires burned, and
people paraded the streets half the night, and everybody was glad
beyond possibility of expression. And among the joyful thousands
all over the land, the Boys in Blue were probably the gladdest
of all; for was not the war over now, and would not "Johnny come
marching home?"
But before we could go home we must be mustered out, and then
we must return to our State capital to be paid off and finally
disbanded, and say a last good-by to our comrades in arms, the
great majority of whom we should never in all probability see
again. And a more hearty, rough and ready, affectionate good-by
there never was in all this wide world. In the rooms of one of
the hotels at the State capital we were gathered, waiting for
our respective trains: knapsacks slung, Sharp's rifles at a
"right-shoulder shift" or a "carry;" songs were sung, hands shaken,
or rather wrung; loud, hearty "God bless you, old fellows!"
resounded; and many were the toasts and the healths that were drunk
before the men parted for good and all.
It was past midnight when the last camp-fire of the One Hundred
and Fiftieth broke up. "Good by, boys! Good by! God bless you, old
fellow!" was shouted again and again, as by companies or in little
squads we were off for our several trains, some of us bound North,
some East, some West,--and all bound for Home!
Of the thirteen men who had gone out from our little village
(whither my father's family had meanwhile removed), but three had
lived to return home together. One had already gone home the day
before. Some had been discharged because of sickness or wounds,
and four had been killed. As we rode along over the dusty turnpike
from L---- to M---- in the rattling old stage-coach that evening in
June, we could not help thinking how painful it would be for the
friends of Joe Gutelius and Jimmy Lucas and Joe Ruhl and John Diehl
to see us return without their brave boys, whom we had left on the
field.
[Illustration: THE WELCOME HOME.]
Reaching the village at dusk, we found gathered at the hotel where
the stage stopped, a great crowd of our school-fellows and friends,
who had come to meet us. We almost feared to step down among them,
lest they should quite tear us to pieces with shaking of hands. The
stage had scarcely stopped when I heard a well-known voice calling:
"Harry! Are _you_ there?"
"Yes, father! Here I am!"
"God bless you, my boy!"
And pushing his way through the crowd, my father plunges into the
stage, not able to wait until it has driven around to the house;
and if his voice is husky with emotion, as he often repeats "God
bless you, my boy!" and gets his arm around my neck, is it any
wonder?
But my dog Rollo can't get into the stage, and so he runs barking
after it, and is the first to greet me at the gate, and jumps up at
me with his great paws on my shoulders. Does he know me? I rather
think he does!
Then mother and sisters come around, and they must needs call for a
lamp and hold it close to my face, and look me all over from head
to foot, while father is saying to himself again and again, "God
bless you, my boy!"
Although I knew that my name was never forgotten in the evening
prayer all the while I was away, yet not once, perhaps, in all that
time was father's voice so choked in utterance as when now, his
heart overflowing, he came to give thanks for my safe return. And
when I lay down that night in a clean white bed, for the first time
in three long years, I thanked God for Peace and Home.
* * * * *
And--Andy? Why--the Lord bless him and his!--he's a soldier still.
For, having laid aside the blue, he put on the black, being a
sober, steady-going Presbyterian parson now, somewhere up in York
State. I haven't seen him for years; but when we do meet, once
in a great while, there is such a wringing of hands as makes us
both wince until the tears start, and we sit up talking over old
times so far into the night that the good folk of the house wonder
whether we shall ever get to--
THE END.