All of the army but two divisions of our corps now took transports to
go to the relief of Pope and Burnside, and to fight the battle of
Antietam. Two divisions of our corps were left on the Peninsula;
Couch's going with the main army. Our brigade took position at
Yorktown, and proceeded to strengthen the defences of that place to
enable it to resist any attack from the direction of Richmond. The work
was soon completed, but we were not troubled by the enemy. Once a raid
of Confederate cavalrymen on Williamsburg created a flurry of
anticipation, but nothing came of it except an opportunity for General
Emory to see the regiments promptly take their previously assigned
positions. The General soon after this left us, General Naglee having
returned, and it was known that though General Emory had taken command
reluctantly, preferring his old command naturally, yet that he left us
with characteristic and vigorous asseverations of regret at having to
do so. Shortly before his leaving, the so-called "'62 men" joined us.
Their recruits were rather looked down on at first by the "veterans" of
one campaign, and for a time were kept in open-mouthed admiration by a
few true, and many apocryphal, stories of the valor and endurance the
story-tellers declared they themselves had so lately displayed. The men
of '62 that D received were all good men and true, and added no little
to the good fellowship of the company as well as to its strength. Many
of them coming from seaboard towns, some of them seafaring men, they
brought a new and rather desirable element, a jovial, adventurous one,
into the ranks, until now almost entirely made up of plodding farmers.
Two expeditions were fitted out from Yorktown, in both of which D took
a part, one to Matthews County and the other to Gloucester Court House.
As Captain Maxfield, then a private of Company C, was an active
participant in both these movements, and the compiler of these sketches
was in neither, Captain Maxfield will tell of what befell the troops of
these expeditions.