Part 3

The Fourth Regiment are encamped about two miles below here. I went down to see them one day last week and had a good time. Saw Kin. Foss, Sam. Porter, “Tulip” Bunten and many others. As I went strolling through the camp, I noted one street down ahead where there appeared to be half a dozens fights going on, in various stages of development. I said to myself, I’ll bet a dollar that’s Charlie Hurd’s company. I won the bet.

The Third Regiment has gone to Annapolis. This afternoon we are to be reviewed by Gen. McClellan. He has reviewed us once before, and it may be that he intends putting us ahead somewhere, and that we shall leave Bladensburg before long.

So you want me to learn a lot of songs, do you? Well, I have anticipated your wishes and already commenced. There is one pathetic local ballad that I have been practicing on and can do pretty well for a green hand. Here is the first verse, which will give you some idea of its high artistic merits:

“_A grasshopper sat on a sweet pertater vine, On a sweet pertater vine, on a sweet pertater vine, When a turkey gob-u-ler acoming up behind Just yanked him off of that sweet pertater vine._”

Then there is another that is very popular with the boys. It is easy to learn, notwithstanding there are 147 verses to it. I will give you the first verse, and when you’ve got that you’ve got the whole thing, for they’re all alike. One, two, sing:

“_John Brown he knew that his father was well, And his father he knew that John Brown he was well, For when John Brown knew that his father was well, His father he knew that John Brown he was well._”

Our entire company was out yesterday cutting down woods that interfered with the range of the guns on the forts we have been building. My mother, having in recollection her experiences with the family wood box when I was a boy, would probably have advised against taking me out. But I am inclined to think that, as a wood chopper I achieved some reputation this time, as after I had gnawed down a tree of considerable size some of the boys called the others to come and admire “Mart’s stump.”

Well, I have strung out a long letter, and some of it you can credit to the delightful surroundings and conditions under which I am working. Here is the picture: A big tent—the Quartermaster’s—overlooking from its back a railroad cut twenty-five or thirty feet deep; an enormous oak tree deeply shading a large space, with a delicious breeze rustling its branches; several of the boys sitting around reading the newspapers, chatting, and looking down upon the numerous trains that pass below; and your own correspondent, with a big pile of army overcoats for a backrest.

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_XXVI_

CAMP UNION, BLADENSBURG, MD., _Oct. 21, 1861_.

We are having some of the worst weather the almanac can dish out to us, and the hospital is full of sick men, some seriously ill. I have, myself, been off duty for several days, but am now on deck again all right. It is surprisingly cold, and tents are not the warmest sleeping apartments in the world. I hope they will take us off down south before long or give us good barracks.

I had a letter from my uncle Nathaniel the other day. [Nathaniel Columbus Knowlton of New London.] He wrote that after he went back from Boston, where he went to see me off, a girl came to my father’s house, whom they introduced as Miss Lane, and who seemed to be very well acquainted. About a month after, Addie told him who you was. He approves.

The two aunts you met at my house are all right. Aunt Polly is the wife of my father’s eldest brother, Joshua. Aunt Olivia was reared down south, in a Catholic seminary at Charleston, South Carolina. Her father, Captain Bailey, was an old time sea captain. Until recently she has been very decided in her southern predilections. But a summer spent in Charleston two years ago changed her sentiment very radically. Her husband—my uncle William—is in the Massachusetts Eighteenth, which is now at Baltimore.

There is quite a little force of cavalry here with us now. They make a brave show in their drilling. Gen. Hooker, who commanded this brigade, now has a division, and Col. Cowdin, of the First Massachusetts, commands the brigade. I believe we shall move from here before long. The boys are getting impatient, and will be very discontented if they hold us here much longer.

You write me of your fingers being cold. If you could only know how cold I am this very minute, you would realize the pleasures of letter-writing in camp. It is a cold day, and I am writing in a wide open tent, which is just the same as out of doors. But we have lots of good times, notwithstanding the cold; and when we get around the campfires at night, we talk of home and the jolly times we will have when we get back to Manchester.

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_XXVII_

HILL TOP, ST. CHARLES COUNTY, MD., _October 28, 1861_.

You will take note that we have changed our location at last. We are now forty or fifty miles below Washington, on the Potomac river, below Budd’s Point. The other side of the river is lined with rebel batteries for a distance of ten miles, up and down, and we are here with ten or twelve thousand men to watch them. We have cavalry and artillery with us. With our regiment is Doubleday’s battery of 12- and 32-pounders. Most of the Fort Sumter men are in this battery. We left Bladensburg Thursday and got here last night—a march of four days. As we were in heavy marching order, all our earthly possessions strapped or hung to us in some way, you can be sure it was a pretty tired crowd that landed in here.

_Tuesday Morning._—I tried to write last night, but it was so cold I had to give up. We are camped down in a deep hollow, where the sun doesn’t get in till pretty late. Every morning the ground is white with frost. It takes all our dry goods to keep us anywhere near comfortable, day or night. Our grub is neither rich nor varied, but it appears to agree with me—with what I have been able to pick up on the side. A man who is enterprising can occasionally get hold of a piece of fresh meat. Until last night, since leaving Bladensburg, every man has been his own cook. Our tin plates served very well as stew- or fry-pans, and coffee drank out of the tin dipper in which it was boiled on the coals of the campfire, has a flavor all its own. But last night the company cooks got into action again and served out boiled corned beef, hardbread, and coffee. As it never rains but it pours, our sutler also got along and opened up shop.

Guard duty in this place is not what it was at Bladensburg. Our company goes on picket today down by the mouth of the creek we are camped on [Nanjamoy,] to watch the rebels over across the river. Mail will leave here three times a week.

Yesterday the rebel batteries were busy throwing shells over to this side of the river, but our regiment was far out of range of fire. Before we came down here the rebels used to come over and visit and forage and gather recruits and scout around with impunity.

The infantry of this division consists of our own brigade—the First and Eleventh Massachusetts, Twenty-sixth Pennsylvania, and the Second—and General Sickles’ “Excelsior Brigade” of five New York regiments. The regiments are strung along for a distance of probably seven or eight miles, we being the farthest south.

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_XXVIII_

CAMP SECOND N. H. REGIMENT, NEAR BUDD’S FERRY, MD., _Nov. 10, 1861_.

When I wrote you last we were camped in a hollow by Nanjamoy Creek. Well, we got driven out. It was so infernally uncomfortable that Col. Marston moved the camp up onto the hill. It is not probable that we shall stay in this camp a very great while, but when or where we will move is a riddle. For all that, we are doing a good deal of fixing up that belongs to a permanent camp. Have built log huts for the company cooks, which will probably be labor thrown away. But we are having a good time. The woods are full of small game, although we do practically no hunting. But the darkies bring in coons, possums, gray squirrels, rabbits and chickens, all cooked, and well cooked. We have not seen any soft bread since we left Washington. Our _hard_ bread certainly does not belie its name. But given a good soaking in coffee, and well lubricated with butter, I manage to dispose of my share.

Our mail is regular in nothing but its irregularity. A three days’ mail for this regiment got as far as the Massachusetts First, and then, in some fool freak, was shipped back to Washington. Everybody is swearing—except, possibly, the chaplain.

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_XXIX_

CAMP BAKER, NEAR BUDD’S FERRY, MD., _Nov. 16, 1861_.

Since my last letter we have moved up several miles and are now encamped with the rest of our brigade, near General Hooker’s headquarters. Our location here is a most attractive one, the camp being in the edge of woods thick enough to afford a perfect wind-break. This insures us against such a calamity as we were up against at wind-swept Hill Top, when several tents were overturned.

Yesterday I had a reserved seat at a first-class show. I heard the rebel batteries on the other side of the Potomac banging away at something, so I went down to the river—not a very great distance—to find out what the trouble was. It was a saucy little schooner skimming down the river, and the rebels trying to hit her. They fired about sixty shots and never made a score. But it was an inspiring sight all the same, the big guns flashing from battery after battery as the vessel came in range, and puffs of smoke in the air or a big splash on the water marking the grand finish.

It looks very much as though we were going into winter quarters here. Logs of suitable size and length are being hauled in, to be used as an underpinning for our canvas houses, and the boys, in squads of five or six, are already at work on their quarters. My crew is already made up, a picked squad of congenial souls, and we will get at our building operations next week.

We had a thunder shower night before last, and it has cleared off very cold. But there is an abundance of fuel, and half a dozen campfires agoing in each company street.

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_XXX_

CAMP SECOND N. H. REGIMENT, CHICKAMOXEN, MD., _Nov. 27, 1861_.

For amateurs, the association of house builders I joined has done a good job. It is on the same general plan as most of the others. First, you start in to build a log cabin. When the walls are four or five feet high, you stop, fasten your tent on top—and there you are. It is astonishing, the room you gain over a plain tent. On the right-hand corner fronting the street is a fireplace—a big one—built, with its chimney, of small logs laid cob-house fashion and thickly plastered with Maryland mud. The bottom is sunk a foot or more, and around the front is a one-log pen or barrier, which serves a double purpose. It is just right for a seat before the fire, and it keeps our thick carpet of straw out of mischief. When we are all fixed up we’ll have bunks and a table and shelves and pegs and a gun rack and everything required in a well-regulated family. I am writing by the light of a candle. Roberts [Orsino,] one of the tent’s crew, is warming himself at the fire and going over all the songs he has in stock, and the rest of the gang seem to have no higher ambition, just at present, than to “break up” both me and him.

Sunday our company went up to “the landing” to help unload two or three small steamers that bring our supplies down from Washington. The landing is at Rum Point, over three miles from here, but as near as boats can get to us, on account of the rebel batteries. As we did not start to return until after dark, we had a sweet time of it. The roads here are now nothing but a ditch through woods and fields, filled with mud of terrible adhesive qualities and of fabulous depth. I thought, for the life of me, I should never get home. If I tried to follow the road, I wallowed up to my knees in mud. If I switched off to one side or the other, I had, in addition to the mud, a butting match with every tree in the county. It was pitch dark when I landed in camp just ahead of a smart shower.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in New Hampshire, and we New Hampshire boys out here on the Potomac will observe it in a befitting manner. In our tent we have a big fat goose up on the shelf, with a rabbit- or chicken-pie or two and a few other fixings. Beat that if you can.

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_XXXI_

CAMP BAKER, CHICKAMOXEN, MD., _Dec. 1, 1861_.

I am just in from our standard show—a little schooner running up the river and thumbing her nose at the rebel batteries. In all, they fired seventy shots at her, with the usual result—no damage done. There was much noise and smoke, a great splashing of the water, and lots of fun for the boys in the gallery. As every shot they fire costs them from ten to fifteen dollars, each schooner trip up or down the river must be an expensive job for them. They must burn up about a thousand good dollars every time, mainly to amuse a lot of Yankee soldiers over on the Maryland shore.

Next Tuesday there is to be a grand review of this division, together with an inspection. These functions are doubtless a military necessity, but not very popular with the men—especially the inspections. You are toled out with your entire outfit, and everything is hauled over, peeked into and examined. They say Gen. McDowell, the old fellow who led us to Bull Run (and back,) is down at headquarters. The last time I saw him he was riding down the front of Burnsides’ brigade, in the corn field at Bull Run, and telling us we had won a victory.

There are a thousand-and-one rumors afloat as to our leaving here, but I am not expecting to move in any other direction than straight across the river. Any man with a vivid imagination can make a guess, whisper it to one or two, and before night it is all over camp as an authentic tip from headquarters, Gen. Heintzelman’s division is advanced on the other side almost down to the rebel position, and my guess is that he will come down on them before long, while we will cross here and give them Jessie, with the aid of the gunboats. They are getting ready for us. We can see them digging and throwing up intrenchments on the opposite hills.

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_XXXII_

CAMP BAKER, CHICKAMOXEN, MD., _Dec. 8, 1861_.

Tomorrow rounds out just seven months of my three years’ term. The other night, at the meeting of a literary society some of the First Massachusetts boys have started, the Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment said he thought the regiment would be home by March. There’s the cheerful optimist for you! Our regiment has been in the service just about the same length of time as the First, and the two will probably be sent home about the same time. Presumably the regiments first in the field will go out first, and so we may get home many months before the later regiments from New Hampshire. They will have to keep them as a sort of police for a while after the war is really over.

For a day or two we have been having splendid weather. But under foot it is simply awful. The “Maryland salve” is everywhere. The roads are a terror now, and in a short time will be absolutely impassible except where corduroyed with logs laid crossways to make some sort of a platform for teams.

We were reinforced last week by a brigade of New Jersey troops. Just below the blockade is a large fleet of gunboats, ready to co-operate in any move we may make. Last night a big steamer ran the blockade in the darkness and there was a terrific hullaballoo.

Joe Hubbard has got back from New Hampshire, but the boxes confided to him have not yet arrived. He says there is one for me, and I am, of course, very anxious to get it.

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_XXXIII_

CAMP BEAUFORT, NEAR BUDD’S FERRY, MD., _Dec. 15, 1861_.

I wish you could take a peek-in on my luxurious surroundings. I have a barber’s chair to sit in. It has a canvas back and seat, and was built by Damon [George B.,] the Jack-at-all-trades of my tent’s party. There is a good fire, plenty of apples at my elbow, and, all in all, I am a pampered child of luxury. There are only two besides myself occupying the castle just at present—George Slade and George Damon—very companionable fellows, and who have seen a great deal of the world. Two—George Cilley and Bill Wilber—are in the hospital, and E. Norman Gunnison (a fellow with a decided talent for writing poetry) is in the guard house for some infraction of camp discipline. So we three that are left have plenty of room and get along mighty comfortably. Slade and Damon are good cooks. We buy flour, butter, sugar, &c., and cook a big slack of fritters whenever the spirit moves us. And we have rabbits, chickens, wheat biscuits, and various other camp luxuries. And occasionally we make molasses candy of an evening. All this, you will understand, is outside of and in addition to our regular army rations.

Here is our schedule of duty: Reveille beats at sunrise, when we turn out and answer to roll call. Then comes the breakfast call. At 9 o’clock is guard mount—that is, the company which has been on guard duty is relieved by another. The remaining companies drill from 9 to 11 and 3 to 5—but now only occasionally, owing to weather conditions. Dinner call at 12. Dress parade at sunset. Tattoo is beat at 8, when the roll is called and the men can go to bed. The Colonel says we will not have much drilling for the rest of the winter.

The boys find plenty to amuse themselves with, and things are by no means dull here in camp. Quite a number of musical instruments have found their way in, and there are men here who know how to play them too—fiddles and banjos and such.

We had a large party of New Hampshire people in camp today—E. H. Rollins, John P. Hale, Daniel Clark, Waterman Smith, E. A. Straw and others. There were also four good-looking New Hampshire women, and they got three rousing cheers at dress parade.

The old rumor factory now has it that the Second is going to Washington within a few days, to act as provost guard. Joe Hubbard’s boxes have not yet arrived, and may not for some time yet. The railroads leading into Washington are buried in freight and express matter, but I suppose our stuff will get through in due time.

You inquire what sort of a place this is. Well, it comes about as near to being no place at all as it could and still be on the map. There are but few houses hereabouts, and a good part of these are just negro cabins. There is a store a little ways from here, but I have yet to discover where enough local trade can come from to keep it going. The Potomac is only about an eighth of a mile from our camp. From the western edge of the strip of woods in which we are camped one can see the river for a long distance, with the rebel batteries, and the upper works of their gunboat “George Paige,” which sticks close up in Quantico Creek, out of reach of our gunboats. The river here is less than two miles wide and the deep-water channel runs very near the other side, so a large vessel has to run close in to the rebel batteries to get through at all.

We witnessed a lively little brush the other day. The rebels started to throw up some works on Shipping Point, and the “Harriet Lane” and five other gunboats dropped down and told them to stop it. The way they pitched shells onto that point was a caution. And a few nights ago—just for fun, as near as I could figure it out—one of our gunboats dropped down to the upper battery and had some sport for a while. I always did like fireworks, so I got the countersign and went out to take in the display. It was worth the money.

You have thought to inquire for “Heenan.” Alas! Poor Heenan! It grieves me to inform you that the other night he got into an argument with a Company D boy. Just what condition the other fellow was left in—if still alive—I don’t know. But when Heenan returned to the bosom of his family he was a sight. His face was badly bruised, both eyes in mourning, and one thumb chewed to a jelly. He says he wanted his thumbs to be mates, and the other was crushed out of shape before he left Portsmouth.

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_XXXIV_

CAMP BEAUFORT, _Dec. 22, 1861_.

Our friends over the river have got another battery in good working order. It mounts a 64-pounder rifled gun, and the other night they dropped two shells within the camp limits of the New Jersey brigade, forty or fifty rods from our camp.

The boxes sent on by Joe Hubbard have at last arrived, and you may be sure we were glad to see them. I presume you know what was in mine as well as I do myself. The pies went into the common stock and disappeared as though they had legs. The various articles of clothing filled my knapsack as full as it would hold. And I must say to you that the little knitted smoking-cap or skating-cap or sleeping cap, or whatever you call it, is the gayest fez in camp. There are quite a number in the company, built on the same general lines, but no two alike, and mine takes first premium. I wish I could see you long enough to thank you for it.

I took one of the big boxes and made a cupboard to keep my things in. I have my eating utensils on one shelf, writing materials, bundles of letters, &c., on another, papers, magazines and books on the third.

Col. Marston was wounded last Sunday by the accidental discharge of a pistol, so Lieut.-Col. Fiske is in command. He is a great fellow for drilling the men, and we are not having as easy a time as we did with Marston.

One of the boys has just come in, bringing a fragment of a shell fired by the rebels at our battery down near the river. All the mementos I have picked up so far are a sand-bag from the rebel works at Fairfax Court House and a few insignificant trifles.

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_XXXV_

CAMP BEAUFORT, _Dec. 29, 1861_.

I am feeling pretty ragged just now, but I see a glimmer of comfort ahead in the shape of a big lot of biscuits Damon is making for supper. We have not had any rations of soft bread since we left Bladensburg, but better days are coming. They are putting in a bakery for the Second Regiment, and when it is done I expect the boys will feel like getting up a celebration. Really, though, it won’t make so much difference in this tent, where we have had a very efficient private bakery in operation for some time. Even I, as a lover of toast, have developed some skill in making good buttered toast out of our hardbread. I soak and boil it a long, long time, then stack the crackers up, buttering each, and it is a pretty palatable dish, if I do say it as shouldn’t.

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_XXXVI_

CAMP BEAUFORT, CHARLES COUNTY, MD., _Jan. 5, 1862_.