Three Years in the Sixth Corps | Page 8

uncommon to see the six mules attached to an army wagon tugging and
striving with all their power to drag the empty wagon out of a mud hole.
Boys who had plied the trade of bootblack gave up their profession and
with pail and sponge in hand called to the passer by, "Wash your boots,
sir?" During the lovely month of December we had been impatient for

action; but now the oft repeated question, "Why don't the Army of the
Potomac move?" became ludicrous to our ears.
Thus passed another month in drills and camp duties. Some recruits
came to us, while many of the men who came out at first were found
unfit for field duty and were discharged.
Distrust arose among officers and enlisted men of our army about the
capital, in regard to the manner in which the army was managed. A
wilderness of men surrounded Washington, and yet we were blockaded
by the rebels on all sides except one.
Government was paying enormous prices for fuel consumed by the
army, because the Potomac was closed, and all wood had to be brought
by rail from the sparsely wooded districts of Maryland. Provisions sold
at fabulous prices, and Washington was in fact a beleaguered city.
Some rays of light from the west penetrated the thick darkness; but it
cannot be concealed that while the Grand Army stationed about the
capital panted for action and longed for the glory of the battle-field, a
gloom possessed the spirits of the men, and a feeling, that all this
splendid material was destined to a "masterly inactivity," prevailed.
Our hopes were newly kindled when the affairs of the War Department
passed into the hands of a live man, and when Mr. Stanton's practical
energy began to be manifested both in the department and in the field.
We heard from Burnside; first sad news, and then of success; and our
hearts burned to be with him. Fort Donelson followed Roanoke; and
Price's army was routed in Missouri. We envied the men who had been
our nearest neighbors, but who had followed Burnside to the South.
Glorious fellows! What cared they now for the fury of the waves or the
hardships of short rations? We were afraid of being left as idle
spectators of great things in which we should not be allowed to
participate.
On the 15th of February came an order for us to move in a few days,
and join Smith's division. This division lay upon the other side of the
river, and although we had been anxious to move we did not wish to
get permanently fixed in the mud by moving there. We knew little of
General Smith or his division, only that the general had been trying

very hard for some time past to get the regiment, and we had little
hopes of good from the new arrangement. How little did we then
suppose that the cross of that old division would be one of the proudest
badges of honor that men could wear!
Sunday night came, and the order to move at once, came also. What a
scene of confusion! We had never broken up camp before, and the
excitement ran high. The pounding and tearing of boards, the shouting
of men and braying of mules, combined in a grand uproar. Bonfires
blazed from every part of the camp, and the whole night was spent in
tearing down quarters and loading the stuff into army wagons as they
presented themselves in great numbers. It was a rare sight. The camp
glowing with a hundred fires, and the men and teams moving about
among them like spectres. Morning came, and the teams were loaded,
and the men ready to march. The teams drove out and formed a line
reaching down 14th street from our camp nearly to the White House!
One hundred and five six-mule teams constituted the train for our
regimental baggage; and so much dissatisfaction prevailed among
certain company officers that we were allowed twenty-five more teams
next day! Rain had fallen nearly all night, and the prospect looked
dreary. As the day advanced the rain came faster and faster, until it
fairly poured. The men waded through mortar nearly to their knees.
It was three o'clock in the afternoon when we reached Smith's division
and the ground on which we were to make our camp. The prospect was
not cheering, and as two or three of our staff officers rode upon the
ground, the place seemed forbidding enough. It had been recently the
location of a thicket of scrub pines, but the trees had been cut down for
fuel, and the stumps and brush remained, so that the mounted officers
found much difficulty in reining their horses into the midst. Snow
covered the ground to the