Part 2

It is remarkable how greatly the presence of an armed force conduces to friendly feeling on the part of the inhabitants. No doubt the secessionists hereabout had done their best for a few days past to prevent our ever arriving at Annapolis Junction. But now that we were there, and especially in need of a freshly cooked breakfast, there was little difficulty in obtaining one for the officers' mess. The fatigue and drowsiness that had been almost overpowering during the night, gave way like magic before the refreshing stimulus of the dawn; and the keen morning air awakened an appetite that demanded something better than pork and hardbread from the haversack. Among the neighboring farmhouses there were some quite ready to supply our wants.

Early in the forenoon a train made its appearance from the direction of Washington. It had been sent out to meet us, under guard of a detachment of National Rifles, a volunteer company of the District of Columbia; and we were soon on board and under way. The cars were crowded to the utmost; but we were now nearing our destination, and every discomfort seemed a trifle. For some distance this side of Washington the road was picketed; and before long we began to see at intervals the head and shoulders of a National Rifleman, with his fresh looking uniform and glittering bayonet, peering at us over the bushes as the train went by. Finally, about noon, the city came in sight. It was Thursday, the 25th. We had been six days in getting from New York to Washington. They had been days of doubt and anxiety, of hindrances, delays, and stoppages. Every hour was precious, and yet we knew that with all possible dispatch we might still be too late. And even now, at the outskirts of the city, we could hardly help looking to see whether the flag of the nation still floated over the Capitol. The train rolled into the depot, the regiment disembarked, formed in column, marched to the White House, reported to the President, and our journey to Washington was accomplished.

There was no doubt about the sense of relief created by our arrival. After nearly a week of isolation and peril, Washington breathed more freely. The only troops there before us were the Sixth Massachusetts, a handful of regulars, and about thirty volunteer companies of the District of Columbia, mainly recent recruits. The Seventh was a full regiment, well disciplined and thoroughly equipped. What was of still more consequence, it had opened the door of Annapolis and reëstablished communication with the north. The Eighth Massachusetts arrived next day from Annapolis Junction; and within another week one more regiment from Massachusetts and four from New York followed by the same route. After that, the city of Baltimore ceased to be an obstruction, and the trains came through from Philadelphia as usual. By the middle of May there were nearly twenty-five thousand troops gathered for the defense of Washington.

For the first week after our arrival we were quartered in the Capitol building; but at the end of that time the regiment went into camp a mile or so north of the city, on Meridian Hill. This was a plateau of about forty acres, admirably adapted for the purpose. It was on the direct road to Harper's Ferry, where the rebels were in possession, and would give security against incursions from that quarter. The camp was on the east side of the road, where there was a fine suburban estate, with a large, square-built mansion house and outbuildings. From the road entrance a well graded avenue led up to the house porch, which stretched its hospitable covering over the carriage way. The house was occupied by regimental headquarters and the staff officers. In front were green fields and orchards, falling away in a gentle slope toward the city; and beyond was the broad Potomac, with the Virginia shore and Arlington Heights in the distance. In the rear were the lines of company tents, and an ample parade-ground, where the regiment was reviewed every day or two by the President, the Secretary of War, the general commanding, or some other high civil or military official, who was usually as much an object of inspection to the troops as the troops were to him.

By degrees other camps began to spring up round about us. On the opposite side of the road were three regiments of New Jersey volunteers, under General Runyon. A field in front of us was the daily exercise ground of a mounted battery of the regular army; and farther down, on the left, was the Twelfth regiment of New York volunteers. The Eleventh New York, under Colonel Ellsworth, was in camp below the city beyond the navy yard. This regiment was affiliated with our own through its second officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Farnham, who had been until then a lieutenant in the Seventh, and had commanded the skirmish line in the march from Annapolis.

The time was coming when the regiment would have something else to do than drilling and camp duty. Washington was saved from the danger that menaced it at the outset; and so long as the troops were there, it was secure from a sudden inroad. But it had no permanent defenses. The Potomac River was the limit of its territory. On the opposite shore the rising ground of Arlington Heights commanded all approaches from that direction; and every day, with a good spyglass, we could see the fluttering of a secession flag in the little city of Alexandria, only six or seven miles away. This was a precarious situation for the seat of government and centre of military operations; and no one was surprised when it made an attempt to burst its shackles.

On the 23d of May, at midnight, the regiment was put in motion and marched down through the city, to the neighborhood of the Long Bridge. Its departure had been quiet and noiseless, as if the expedition were a secret to all but the commanding officer. It soon appeared, however, from signs that the uninitiated are not slow to comprehend, that something more was going on than the night march of the regiment. The order to halt came from other sources to our own commander. After some delay, a part of the New Jersey brigade came up from the rear and passed on in advance; and there was riding here and there of officers and messengers, going and coming in various directions. Nevertheless, everything was done in silence. Not even the occupants of the neighboring houses seemed to be awakened or disturbed; and it gave to the scene a mysterious kind of interest to feel that we were on some errand that neither friends nor enemies were to know of until it was accomplished.

Again our column was on the march, and we soon found ourselves at the entrance of the Long Bridge. We passed between the two guard-houses, under the black timbers of the draw-frame, and over its three quarters of a mile of roadway to the Virginia shore. It was the first hour of a moonlight night, and half a mile farther on, at daybreak, the regiment was halted and went into bivouac on an open field by the roadside.

Not long after sunrise a horseman came clattering along the road from the direction of Alexandria, and as he galloped by toward the bridge, he flung out to us the news, "Alexandria is taken, and Colonel Ellsworth is killed."

This was one of the minor events in the early part of the war that excited a wide-spread interest, mainly from the dramatic features of the incident. The Eleventh New York had reached Alexandria by steamer, and landed there about daylight. Immediately after disembarking, Colonel Ellsworth had left his regiment, and with a small squad hastened to secure the telegraph office, to prevent communication with the south. That done, he noticed, flying above the principal hotel in the town, a secession flag. It was the flag we had seen so often for the last fortnight from the direction of Washington. The colonel effected an entrance, and with his companions mounted to the roof, hauled down the flag, and brought it away with him. When about halfway down he was shot dead by the keeper of the hotel, who was lying in wait for him with a double-barreled gun. Instantly the soldier next him discharged his musket in the face of the homicide, and, driving his bayonet through his breast, hurled his body down the remaining stairway; so that within a minute both the colonel and his assailant were dead men. None of those in the hotel knew of the arrival of the regiment, and probably thought they had to do only with a few raiders from abroad.

This news of the occupation of Alexandria was our first intimation of the actual extent of the movement we were engaged in. The truth was that between midnight and dawn about 12,000 men had crossed the Potomac by the two bridges at Washington and Georgetown, beside the Eleventh regiment which went by steamer. They were to hold and fortify a defensive line extending from below Alexandria, around Arlington Heights, to the Potomac River above Georgetown; comprising, when all complete, a chain of twenty-three forts, for the permanent security of the city on its southern side. Our own destination was a locality not far from our first bivouac, and where the New Jersey troops, who had gone before, were already breaking ground for the trenches.

Next day the men of the Seventh were also set to work with pick and spade and barrow, excavating the ditch and piling up the rampart along the lines laid down by the engineers. One fatigue party followed another, all doing their best, like so many ants on an ant-hill; and before night the place began to look something like a fortification. When finished it was the largest of those on the south side of the river, occupying a space of about fourteen acres. It was an inclosed bastioned work, covering the two forks of the road; one leading south to Alexandria, the other southwest toward Fairfax Court House. It defended the Long Bridge, and secured its possession for ingress and egress. It was named Fort Runyon, in honor of the general commanding the New Jersey brigade.

After a few days on the Virginia shore, the regiment was ordered back to its camp at Meridian Hill. It had been mustered into service for one month, to meet an emergency which was now past. Orders for its return north were received on the 30th of May; and on the 31st it broke camp and embarked for New York, arriving there on the 1st of June. It was then mustered out of service, having been under arms forty-three days.

This was the "Washington campaign" of the Seventh regiment. It was a campaign without a battle, and the regiment was not once under fire from the enemy. Its only casualties were one man killed in camp by the accidental discharge of a musket, and another wounded in the leg by his own pistol. But it came to the front at a time when one battalion for the moment was more needed than a brigade afterward. Though mustered out as a regiment, it at once began to supply material for other organizations. Of its members in 1861, more than six hundred entered the service during the war; over fifty became regimental commanders; from twenty to thirty, brigadier-generals; and more than one reached the grade of major-general. With all this depletion, its ranks were kept tolerably full by new recruits, and it was twice afterward called into the field for temporary duty, once in 1862, and again in 1863.

THE EXPEDITION TO PORT ROYAL.

After my return from Washington in 1861, I resigned my commission in the Seventh regiment, and looked for an opportunity of more permanent connection with the service.

The most attractive position which offered was that of surgeon of brigade, recently established by act of Congress; and, a medical board having been convened for the examination of candidates, I appeared before it, passed the examination, and in due time received my commission as Brigade Surgeon of Volunteers.

At that time each volunteer regiment had its surgeon and assistant surgeon, who were in general quite competent to the work they had to do. Like other regimental officers, they received their appointments and commissions from the authorities of their own state, and were permanently attached to their particular regiments, without being either authorized or required to go elsewhere.

But when the volunteer army came to be organized into brigades, under command of brigadier generals with a general staff, it was found that there were no medical officers to correspond. They were needed to receive and consolidate the regimental reports, inspect the health of the commands, establish field hospitals, and perform in every way the duties of a general medical officer. Such places were filled, so far as possible, by the surgeons and assistant surgeons of the regular army. But these were too few in number to provide for the large volunteer force suddenly called into action; and for that reason the new grade of brigade surgeon was created. My commission was dated August 3, 1861.

But it was not until the first week in October that I received orders to report in Washington at army headquarters. On arriving there, I was directed to join General Viele's brigade and report for duty to that officer.

General Viele's brigade was at Annapolis. So, as soon as possible, I proceeded, with my horse, baggage, and camp equipage, to Annapolis Junction, and thence, by the branch road that I had traveled with the Seventh, to Annapolis. There I found the general and his staff, quartered in the old St. John's College, a little outside the town. A locality always looks different when you are arriving and when you are going away; and, notwithstanding my brief acquaintance with Annapolis six months before, now that I was coming to it from a different direction and for another purpose, I should hardly have known it for the same place.

The building where we were quartered was a plain brick edifice, several stories in height, facing the town, with a distant view of the harbor beyond. In front was the college green, where some of the regiments were paraded for the presentation of flags. One of these presentations was made, a week after my arrival, by Governor Hicks, who had now seen his way clear to support the Union. In the rear and to the westward were the regimental camps.

It soon appeared that the troops were gathering at Annapolis in considerable force. In all, there were three brigades: General Viele's, General Stevens's, and General Wright's,--the whole forming a division of a little over twelve thousand men, under command of General W. T. Sherman. In General Viele's brigade there were five regiments,--the Forty-sixth, Forty-seventh, and Forty-eighth New York, the Third New Hampshire, and Eighth Maine. This brigade was the earliest on the ground and ranked first in the division. General Stevens's was the second brigade, and General Wright's the third. Each had a brigade surgeon; and a chief medical officer, from the regular army, was attached to the staff of the division commander.

It was also claimed that we were going somewhere. Already a number of transports were in the bay, and others continued to arrive, evidently for our accommodation. Orders from the commanding general or his adjutant were dated: "Headquarters, Division E. C." These cabalistic letters were supposed to indicate in some way our future destination, though I do not remember ever seeing them, either written or printed, except as initials. After a time they were understood to mean Expeditionary Corps; but that hardly made us much wiser as to how far or in what direction we were bound.

At the end of a fortnight all was ready. One by one the transports came into the harbor and took on their load of stores, artillery, ammunition, and wagons; and finally the troops embarked. Our own vessel, occupied by General Viele and his staff, was the _Oriental_, an iron-built ocean steamer of nine hundred tons, formerly a packet running to Havana. She also carried provisions and ordnance, and one or two companies of soldiers belonging to the brigade.

After saying good-by to Annapolis, our vessels steamed slowly together down the broad highway of the Chesapeake, past the mouth of the Potomac river, almost as broad, and the next day came to anchor in Hampton Roads. So far, our voyage was only a preliminary. We had arrived at a second rendezvous, where the remainder of the expedition was in waiting; and we now began to have an idea of its real magnitude. Grouped around us over the ample roadstead, there were war vessels of all grades and dimensions, from a steam frigate to a gunboat. Whether they were all to go with us we knew not, but the number of coaling schooners lying about seemed to indicate that most of them were under sailing orders.

However, there was more waiting to be done before the final start, and we passed a week without shifting our anchorage. Not being responsible for anything outside our own brigade, we devoted ourselves mainly to cultivating the virtue of patience. Yet we could not help feeling that such a military and naval demonstration, gathered at such a point, could not long remain a secret; and that, wherever we might be bound, if it were any object to arrive without being expected, the sooner we could get away the better. For medical officers there was another cause of anxiety, which I began to appreciate almost as soon as our anchor was down. When soldiers are on land it is always possible to care for their sanitary condition. Camps can be cleansed and drained, or shifted to better ground; and the sick can be placed in hospital, or isolated at a respectable distance from the rest. But how to do this with troops confined within the narrow quarters of a ship? And what if some contagion should break out among them, like smouldering fire in a haystack? Every exertion was made to keep the transports in fair condition as to cleanliness and ventilation, and to watch for the appearance of any suspicious malady. But every day made it more difficult to do the one, and added to the danger of the other. Fortunately, we got through without any serious mishap of this kind.

Meanwhile, we had some entertainment in watching our naval colleagues, and trying to learn what and who they were. They were in frequent communication with each other or with the shore; and their trim barges, with the regular dip of their oars, and a kind of scientific certainty about the way they went through the water, contrasted well with the rather sprawly fashion of our own boats and their soldier crews. The commander of the naval force was Captain Dupont.

His flagship, the _Wabash_, a double deck steam frigate of forty guns, was the most imposing object in view. Then came the sloops-of-war _Mohican_, _Seminole_, and _Pawnee_, with gunboats of various sizes, and the great transports _Atlantic_, _Baltic_, and _Vanderbilt_, each of about 3000 tons burden; making altogether, with the additional transports and supply boats, a fleet of nearly fifty vessels.

At last the preparations were complete, and on Tuesday, October 29th, the signal for starting was given. Away from Hampton Roads, through the mouth of the Chesapeake, past the capes of Virginia, and then at sea, with prows toward the south, the stately procession moved along, every vessel in its place. The flagship led the van, with other men-of-war trailing behind, like ripples, in two diverging lines. Then came the transports in three columns, formed by the three brigades, and lastly a few gunboats brought up the rear. The vessels of the first brigade formed the right column, and as the sun went down the Virginia shore was just sinking out of sight. The weather was favorable, and every one felt pleased to see the expedition now fairly on its way.

Our progress was not very rapid. Many of the war vessels were slow-going craft, and the rest had to accommodate their speed to the leisurely rate of five or six knots. We were fully twenty-four hours in making Cape Hatteras; and, notwithstanding the bad reputation of this locality, we found there hardly enough wind and sea to be uncomfortable. The main topic of talk was our destination. No one in the fleet knew what that was except the two commanders, Captain Dupont and General Sherman. The commanding officer on each vessel brought with him sealed orders, which he was not to open unless separated from the rest. But all were at liberty to guess; and in our discussions there were three objective points favored by the knowing ones; Bull's Bay on the coast of South Carolina, Port Royal entrance about a hundred miles farther down, and Fernandina in Florida. As I knew them all only as so many names on the map, and had no idea why one should be a more desirable conquest than the other, I listened for entertainment, without caring to choose between them. Our military family was made up of various elements, but all were good-natured and companionable, and promised to grow still better on acquaintance. General Viele was a graduate of West Point, and we all looked to him for information in regard to military affairs.

The order of sailing became somewhat deranged after a time, though at the end of two days we were still in sight of the flagship, with from thirty to forty others in the horizon. So far, the weather had given us no trouble. But on Friday, November 1st, it began to be rough. The sky was overcast, the ship rolled and pitched, and the wind howled in a way that gave warning of worse to come. As the day wore on, there was no improvement, and before nightfall it was blowing a gale.

There is a difference between a storm and a gale of wind. A storm is disagreeable enough, with the driving rain, the lead-colored sky, the sea covered with foam, and the wet decks all going up and down hill. There is not much pleasure while that lasts. But in a gale of wind, discomfort is not what you think of. After the tempest has grown and gathered strength for five or six hours together, it begins to look threatening and wicked. The sea is a black gulf around the ship; and the great waves come rolling at her, one after the other, like troops of hungry wolves furious to swallow her up. A thousand more are behind them, and she has to fight them all, single handed, for life or death. She must keep her head steady to the front, and meet every billow as it comes without faltering or flinching; for if she loses courage or strength and falls away to leeward, the next big comber will topple over her side and she will go under.

When a good ship is wrestling with such a sea, she does it almost like a living creature. She sways and settles, and rises and twists, and her beams groan and creak with the strain that is on them. But her joints hold, and she answers her helm; and the steady pulsation of her engines gives assurance of undiminished vitality and motive power. So long as she behaves in this way, you know that she is equal to the work. But what if the sea should grow yet fiercer and heavier, and buffet her with redoubled energy till she is maimed or exhausted? She is a mechanical construction, knit together with bolts and braces; and the steam from her boilers is to her the breath of life. However stanch and true, her power of resistance is limited. But in the elements there is a reserve of force and volume that is immeasurable; and when they once begin to run riot, no one can tell how severe it may become or how long it will last.