The Recollections of a Drummer-Boy

"Harry, I'm getting tired of this thing. It's becoming monotonous, this thing of being roused every morning at four, with orders to pack up and be ready to march at a moment's n...

"It is no use, Andy, I cannot study any more. I have struggled against this feeling, and have again and again resolved to shut myself up to my books and stop thinking about the...

We had been quietly lying in our winter quarters there at Belle Plains some two months and more, without having yet had much to vary the dull monotony of a soldier's everyday li...

In what way to account for it I know not, but so it is, that soldiers always have been, and I suppose always will be, merry-hearted fellows and full of good spirits. One would n...

Among all civilized nations the "rules of war" seem to have been written with an iron hand. The laws by which the soldier in the field is governed are of necessity inexorable, f...

It was the afternoon of Tuesday, June 14, 1864. We had been marching and fighting almost continually for five weeks and more, from the Wilderness to Spottsylvania, over the Nort...

We were encamped in an oak-forest on the eastern bank of the Rappahannock, late in the fall of 1863. We had built no winter-quarters yet, although the nights were growing rather...

Our first camp was located on the outskirts of Harrisburg, Pa., and was called "Camp Curtin." It was so named in honor of Governor Andrew G. Curtin, the "War Governor" of the St...

At last the long winter, with its deep snows and intense cold, was gone, and on May 4, 1864, at four o'clock in the morning, we broke camp. In what direction we should march, wh...

"Harry, wouldn't you like to go out on picket with us to-morrow? The weather is pleasant, and I'd like to have you for company, for time hangs rather heavy on a fellow's hands o...

The pet-making disposition which had led Andy and me to take so much trouble with our mice was not confined to ourselves alone. The disposition was quite natural, and therefore...

On the morning of May 23d, 1864, after a good and refreshing sleep, we took up the line of march and moved rapidly all day in a southerly direction, "straight for Richmond," acc...

After crossing South Mountain,--but stop, I just _must_ tell you about that, it will take but a paragraph or two. South Mountain Pass we entered one July evening, after a drench...

It is no easy matter to describe a long day's march to one who knows nothing of the hardships of a soldier's life. That a body of troops marched some twenty-five or thirty miles...

"Well, fellows, I tell you what! I've heard a good deal about the balmy breezes and sunny skies of Old Virginny, but if this is a specimen of the sort of weather they have in th...

After two weeks in that miserable camp at the State capital, we were ordered to Washington; and into Washington, accordingly, one sultry September morning, we marched, after a d...

If from any cause whatsoever one happened to have lost his command, or to have strayed away from or to have been left behind by his regiment, he could usually tell with tolerabl...

It was Frederick the Great, I believe, who said that "An army, like a serpent, goes upon its belly,"--which was but another way of saying that if you want men to fight well, you...

About the beginning of December, 1864, we were busy building cabins for the winter. Everywhere in the woods to our rear were heard the sound of axes and the crash of falling tre...

"Pack up!" "Fall in!" All is stir and excitement in the camp. The bugles are blowing "boots and saddles" for the cavalry camped above us on the hill; we drummer-boys are beating...

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...

All along the line of battle-worn men, now gathered in irregular groups behind the breastworks, and safe from the enemy, I searched for him--and searched in vain. Not a soul had...

What glorious camp-fires we used to have in the fall of the year 1863! It makes one rub his hands together yet, just to think of them. The nights were getting cold and frosty, s...

I had frequently seen pictures of battle-fields, and had often read about them; but the most terrible scenes of carnage my boyish imagination had ever figured fell far short of...

While we were yet before Petersburg, two divisions of our corps (the Fifth), with two divisions of the Ninth, leaving the line of works at the Weldon Railroad, were pushed out s...

On a certain day near the beginning of April, 1863, we were ordered to prepare for a grand review of our corps. President Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln, Master Tad Lincoln (who used to...