 | Life in the open air |  |
WASHINGTON AS A CAMP.
OUR BARRACKS AT THE CAPITOL.
We marched up the hill, and when the dust
opened there was our Big Tent ready pitched.
It was an enormous tent, — the Sibley pattern
modified. A simple soul in our ranks looked up
and said, — “Tent! canvas! I don't see it: that's
marble!” Whereupon a simpler soul informed us,
— “Boys, that 's the Capitol.”
And so it was the Capitol, — as glad to see the
New York Seventh Regiment as they to see it.
The Capitol was to be our quarters, and I was
pleased to notice that the top of the dome had
been left off for ventilation.
The Seventh had had a wearisome and anxious
progress from New York, as I have chronicled in
the June “Atlantic.” We had marched from Annapolis,
while “rumors to right of us, rumors to
left of us, volleyed and thundered.” We had not
expected that the attack upon us would be merely
verbal. The truculent citizens of Maryland notified
us that we were to find every barn a Concord
and every hedge a Lexington. Our Southern brethren
they would keep their warlike promises. At
least, everybody thought, “They will fire over our
heads, or bang blank cartridges at us.” Every
nose was sniffing for the smell of powder. Vapor
instead of valor nobody looked for. So the march
had been on the qui vive. We were happy enough
that it was over, and successful.
Successful, because Mumbo Jumbo was not installed
in the White House. It is safe to call Jeff
Davis Mumbo Jumbo now. But there is no doubt
that the luckless man had visions of himself receiving
guests, repudiating debts, and distributing embassies
in Washington, May 1, 1861. And as to
La' Davis, there seems to be documentary evidence
that she meant to be “At Home” in the capital,
bringing the first strawberries with her from Montgomery
for her May-day soirée. Bah! one does
not like to sneer at people who have their necks in
the halter; but one happy result of this disturbance
is that the disturbers have sent themselves to Coventry.
The Lincoln party may be wanting in finish.
Finish comes with use. A little roughness
of manner, the genuine simplicity of a true soul
like Lincoln, is attractive. But what man of breeding
could ever stand the type Southern Senator?
But let him rest in such peace as he can find! He
and his peers will not soon be seen where we of the
New York Seventh were now entering.
They gave us the Representatives Chamber for
quarters. Without running the gantlet of caucus
sacred shrine.
In we marched, tramp, tramp. Bayonets took
the place of buncombe. The frowzy creatures in
ill-made dress-coats, shimmering satin waistcoats,
and hats of the tile model, who lounge, spit, and
vociferate there, and name themselves M. C., were
off. Our neat uniforms and bright barrels showed
to great advantage, compared with the usual costumes
of the usual dramatis personœ of the scene.
It was dramatic business, our entrance there.
The new Chamber is gorgeous, but ineffective.
Its ceiling is flat, and panelled with transparencies.
Each panel is the coat-of-arms of a State, painted
on glass. I could not see that the impartial sunbeams,
tempered by this skylight, had burned away
the insignia of the malecontent States. Nor had
any rampant Secessionist thought to punch any of
the seven lost Pleiads out from that firmament with
a long pole. Crimson and gold are the prevailing
hues of the decorations. There is no unity and
breadth of coloring. The desks of the members
radiate in double files from a white marble tribune
at the centre of the semicircle.
In came the new actors on this scene. Our presence
here was the inevitable sequel of past events.
We appeared with bayonets and bullets because of
the bosh uttered on this floor; because of the bills
— with treasonable stump-speeches in their bellies
— passed here; because of the cowardice of the
poltroons, the imbecility of the dodgers, and the
to blind and corrupt the minds of the people.
Talk had made a miserable mess of it. The ultima
ratio was now appealed to.
Some of our companies were marched up-stairs
into the galleries. The sofas were to be their beds.
With their white cross-belts and bright breastplates,
they made a very picturesque body of spectators
for whatever happened in the Hall, and
never failed to applaud in the right or the wrong
place at will.
Most of us were bestowed in the amphitheatre.
Each desk received its man. He was to scribble
on it by day, and sleep under it by night. When
the desks were all taken, the companies overflowed
into the corners and into the lobbies. The staff
took committee-rooms. The Colonel reigned in the
Speaker's parlor.
Once in, firstly, we washed.
Such a wash merits a special paragraph. I compliment
the M. C.s, our hosts, upon their water-privileges.
How we welcomed this chief luxury
after our march! And thenceforth how we prized
it! For the clean face is an institution which requires
perpetual renovation at Washington. “Constant
vigilance is the price” of neatness. When
the sky here is not travelling earthward in rain,
earth is mounting skyward in dust. So much dirt
must have an immoral effect.
After the wash we showed ourselves to the eyes
of Washington, marching by companies, each to a
ceremonies of our barrack-life. We liked it. The
Washingtonians were amused and encouraged by
it. Three times a day, with marked punctuality, our
lines formed and tramped down the hill to scuffle
with awkward squads of waiters for fare more or
less tolerable. In these little marches we encountered
by and by the other regiments, and, most soldierly
of all, the Rhode Island men, in blue flannel
blouses and bersaglière hats. But of them hereafter.
It was a most attractive post of ours at the
Capitol. Spring was at its freshest and fairest.
Every day was more exquisite than its forerunner.
We drilled morning, noon, and evening,
almost hourly, in the pretty square east of the
building. Old soldiers found that they rattled
through the manual twice as alert as ever before.
Recruits became old soldiers in a trice. And as to
awkward squads, men that would have been the
veriest louts and lubbers in the piping times of
peace now learned to toe the mark, to whisk their
eyes right and their eyes left, to drop the buts of
their muskets without crushing their corns, and all
the mysteries of flank and file, — and so became
full-fledged heroes before they knew it.
In the rests between our drills we lay under the
young shade on the sweet young grass, with the
odors of snowballs and horse-chestnut blooms drifting
to us with every whiff of breeze, and amused
ourselves with watching the evolutions of our
friends of the Massachusetts Eighth, and other less
field. They too, like ourselves, were going through
the transformations. These sturdy fellows were
then in a rough enough chrysalis of uniform. That
shed, they would look worthy of themselves.
But the best of the entertainment was within the
Capitol. Some three thousand or more of us were
now quartered there. The Massachusetts Eighth
were under the dome. No fear of want of air for
them. The Massachusetts Sixth were eloquent for
their State in the Senate Chamber. It was singularly
fitting, among the many coincidences in the
history of this regiment, that they should be there,
tacitly avenging the assault upon Sumner and the
attempts to bully the impregnable Wilson.
In the recesses, caves, and crypts of the Capitol
what other legions were bestowed I do not know.
I daily lost myself, and sometimes when out of
my reckoning was put on the way by sentries of
strange corps, a Reading Light Infantry man, or
some other. We all fraternized. There was a fine
enthusiasm among us: not the soldierly rivalry in
discipline that may grow up in future between men
of different States acting together, but the brotherhood
of ardent fellows first in the field and earnest
in the cause.
All our life in the Capitol was most dramatic
and sensational.
Before it was fairly light in the dim interior of
the Representatives' Chamber, the réveilles of the
different regiments came rattling through the corridors.
The impressive sound of the hushed breathing of a
thousand sleepers, marking off the fleet moments
of the night, gave way to a most vociferous uproar.
The boy element is large in the Seventh
Regiment. Its slang dictionary is peculiar and
unabridged. As soon as we woke, the pit began
to chaff the galleries, and the galleries the pit.
We were allowed noise nearly ad libitum. Our
riotous tendencies, if they existed, escaped by the
safety-valve of the larynx. We joked, we shouted,
we sang, we mounted the Speaker's desk and made
speeches, — always to the point; for if any but a
wit ventured to give tongue, he was coughed down
without ceremony. Let the M. C.s adopt this plan
and silence their dunces.
With all our jollity we preserved very tolerable
decorum. The regiment is assez bien composé.
Many of its privates are distinctly gentlemen of
breeding and character. The tone is mainly good,
and the esprit de corps high. If the Colonel should
say, “Up, boys, and at 'em!” I know that the
Seventh would do brilliantly in the field. I speak
now of its behavior in-doors. This certainly did it
credit. Our thousand did the Capitol little harm
that a corporal's guard of Biddies with mops and
tubs could not repair in a forenoon's campaign.
Perhaps we should have served our country
better by a little Vandalism. The decorations of
the Capitol have a slight flavor of the Southwestern
steamboat saloon. The pictures (now, by the
better, if the figures were bayoneted and the backgrounds
sabred out. Both — pictures and decorations
— belong to that bygone epoch of our country
when men shaved the moustache, dressed like parsons,
said “Sir,” and chewed tobacco, — a transition
epoch, now become an historic blank.
The home-correspondence of our legion of young
heroes was illimitable. Every one had his little
tale of active service to relate. A decimation of
the regiment, more or less, had profited by the
tender moment of departure to pop the question
and to receive the dulcet “Yes.” These lucky
fellows were of course writing to Dulcinea regularly,
three meals of love a day. Mr. Van Wyck,
M. C., and a brace of colleagues, were kept hard
at work all day giving franks and saving three-pennies
to the ardent scribes. Uncle Sam lost certainly
three thousand cents a day in this manner.
What crypts and dens, caves and cellars, there
are under that great structure! And barrels of
flour in every one of them this month of May, 1861.
Do civilians eat in this proportion? Or does long
standing in the “Position of a Soldier” (vide
“Tactics” for a view of that graceful pose) increase
a man's capacity for bread and beef so enormously?
It was infinitely picturesque in these dim vaults
by night. Sentries were posted at every turn.
Their guns gleamed in the gaslight. Sleepers were
lying in their blankets wherever the stones were
waiting their turn. We have not had much of this
scenery in America, and the physiognomy of volunteer
military life is quite distinct from anything
one sees in European service. The People have
never had occasion until now to occupy their Palace
with armed men.
THE FOLLOWING IS THE OATH.
We were to be sworn into the service of the
United States the afternoon of April 26th. All the
Seventh, raw men and ripe men, marched out into
the sweet spring sunshine. Every fellow had whitened
his belts, burnished his arms, curled his moustache,
and was scowling his manliest for Uncle
Sam's approval.
We were drawn up by companies in the Capitol
Square for mustering in.
Presently before us appeared a gorgeous officer,
in full fig. “Major McDowell!” somebody whispered,
as we presented arms. He is a General, or
perhaps a Field Marshal, now. Promotions come
with a hop, skip, and jump, in these times, when
demerit resigns and merit stands ready to step to
the front.
Major-Colonel-General McDowell, in a soldierly
voice, now called the roll, and we all answered,
“Here!” in voices more or less soldierly. He
entertained himself with this ceremony for an hour.
The roll over, we were marched and formed in three
officer stepped forward, and recited to us the
conditions of our service. “In accordance with a
special arrangement, made with the Governor of
New York,” says the Major, “you are now mustered
into the service of the United States, to serve
for thirty days, unless sooner discharged”; and
continues he, “the oath will now be read to you
by the magistrate.”
Hereupon a gentleman en mufti, but wearing a
military cap with an oil-skin cover, was revealed.
Until now he had seemed an impassive supernumerary.
But he was biding his time, and — with
due respect be it said — saving his wind, and now
in a Stentorian voice he ejaculated, —
“The following is the oath!”
Per se this remark was not comic. But there
was something in the dignitary's manner which
tickled the regiment. As one man the thousand
smiled, and immediately adopted this new epigram
among its private countersigns.
But the good-natured smile passed away as we
listened to the impressive oath, following its title.
We raised our right hands, and, clause by clause,
repeated the solemn obligation, in the name of
God, to be faithful soldiers of our country. It was
not quite so comprehensive as the beautiful knightly
pledge administered by King Arthur to his comrades,
and transmitted to our time by Major-General
Tennyson of the Parnassus Division. We did not
swear, as they did of yore, to be true lovers as
particularly when you were engaged to your
Amanda the evening before you started, as was
the case with many a stalwart brave and many a
mighty man of a corporal or sergeant in our ranks.
We were thrilled and solemnized by the stately
ceremony of the oath. This again was most
dramatic. A grand public recognition of a duty.
A reavowal of the fundamental belief that our
system was worthy of the support, and our Government
of the confidence, of all loyal men. And
there was danger in the middle distance of our
view into the future, — danger of attack, or dangerous
duty of advance, just enough to keep any
trifler from feeling that his pledge was mere holiday
business.
So, under the cloudless blue sky, we echoed in
unison the sentences of the oath. A little low
murmur of rattling arms, shaken with the hearty
utterance, made itself heard in the pauses. Then
the band crashed in magnificently.
We were now miserable mercenaries, serving for
low pay and rough rations. Read the Southern
papers and you will see us described. “Mudsills,”
— that, I believe, is the technical word. By repeating
a form of words after a gentleman in a glazed
cap and black raiment, we had suffered change
into base assassins, the offscouring of society,
starving for want of employment, and willing to
“imbrue our coarse fists in fraternal blood” for
the sum of eleven dollars a month, besides hardtack,
States bond apiece for bounty, or free loot in the
treasuries of Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas,
after the war. How carefully from that day we
watched the rise and fall of United States stocks!
If they should go low among the nineties, we felt
that our eleven dollars per mensem would be imperilled.
We stayed in our palace for a week or so after
April 26th, the day of the oath. That was the most
original part of our duty thus far. New York
never had so unanimous a deputation on the floor
of the Representatives Chamber before, and never
a more patriotic one. Take care, Gentlemen Members
of Congress! look to your words and your
acts honestly and wisely in future! don't palter
with Liberty again! it is not well that soldiers
should get into the habit of thinking they are always
to unravel the snarls and cut the knots
twisted and tied by clumsy or crafty fingers. The
traitor States already need the main de fer, — yes,
and without the gant de velours. Let us beware,
and keep ourselves worthy of the boon of self-government,
man by man! I do not wish to hear,
“Order arms!” and “Charge bayonets!” in the
Capitol. But this present defence of Free Speech
and Free Thought ends, let us hope, that danger
forever.
When we had been ten days in our showy barracks
we began to quarrel with luxury. What had
private soldiers to do with the desks of lawgivers?
dining-rooms of Washington hotels, partaking the
admirable dainties there?
The May sunshine, the birds, and the breezes of
May, invited us to Camp, — the genuine thing, under
canvas. Besides, Uncles Sam and Abe wanted
our room for other company. Washington was
filling up fast with uniforms. It seemed as if all
the able-bodied men in the country were moving,
on the first of May, with all their property on their
backs, to agreeable, but dusty, lodgings on the
Potomac.
We also made our May move. One afternoon,
my company, the Ninth, and the Engineers, the
Tenth, were detailed to follow Captain Vielé, and
lay out a camp on Meridian Hill.
CAMP CAMERON.
As we had the first choice, we got, on the whole,
the best site for a camp. We occupy the villa and
farm of Dr. Stone, two miles due north of Willard's
Hotel. I assume that hotel as a peculiarly American
point of departure, and also because it is the
hub of Washington, — the centre of an eccentric,
having the White House at the end of its shorter,
and the Capitol at the end of its longer radius, —
moral, so they say, as well as geometrical.
Sundry dignitaries, Presidents and what not, have
lived here in times gone by. Whoever chose the
site ought to be kindly remembered for his good
commanding the plain of Washington. From the
upper windows we can see the Potomac opening
southward like a lake, and between us and the
water ambitious Washington stretching itself along
and along, like the shackly files of an army of recruits.
Oaks love the soil of this terrace. There are
some noble ones on the undulations before the
house. It may be permitted even for one who is
supposed to think of nothing but powder and ball
to notice one of these grand trees. Let the ivy-covered
stem of the Big Oak of Camp Cameron
take its place in literature! And now enough of
scenery. The landscape will stay, but the troops
will not. There are trees and slopes of greensward
elsewhere, and shrubbery begins to blossom in
these bright days of May before a thousand pretty
homes. The tents and the tent-life are more interesting
for the moment than objects which cannot
decamp.
The old villa serves us for head-quarters. It is a
respectable place, not without its pretensions.
Four granite pillars, as true grit as if the two Presidents
Adams had lugged them on their shoulders
all the way from Quincy, Mass., make a carriage-porch.
Here is the Colonel in the big west parlor,
the Quartermaster and Commissary in the rooms
with sliding-doors on the east, the Hospital up-stairs,
and so on. Other rooms, numerous as the
cells in a monastery, serve as quarters for the
in aspect. The house is, of course, a Certosa, so far
as the gentler sex are concerned; but no anchorites
dwell here at present. If the Seventh disdained
everything but soldiers' fare, — which it does not,
— common civility would require that it should
do violence to its disinclination for comfort and
luxury, and consume the stores sent down by
ardent patriots in New York. The cellars of the
villa overflow with edibles, and in the greenhouse
is a most appetizing array of barrels, boxes, cans,
and bottles, shipped here that our Sybarites might
not sigh for the flesh-pots of home. Such trash
may do very well to amuse the palate in these
times of half peace, half hostility; but when
Shall doubly thundering swell the gale,”
simple ration, and cease to dabble with frying-pans.
Cooks to their aprons, and soldiers to their guns!
Our tents are pitched on a level clover-field sloping
to the front for our parade-ground. We use
the old wall tent without a fly. It is necessary to
live in one of these awhile, to know the vast superiority
of the Sibley pattern. Sibley's tent is a
wrinkle taken from savage life. It is the Sioux
buffalo-skin lodge, or Tepee, improved, — a cone
truncated at the top and fitted with a movable apex
for ventilation. A single tent-pole, supported upon
a hinged tripod of iron, sustains the structure. It
is compacter, more commodious, healthier, and
should be used in permanent encampments. For
marching troops, the French Tente d'abri is a capital
shelter.
Still our fellows manage to be at home as they
are. Some of our model tents are types of the
best style of temporary cottages. Young housekeepers
of limited incomes would do well to visit
and take heed. A whole elysium of household
comfort can be had out of a teapot, — tin; a brace
of cups, — tin; a brace of plates, — tin; and a
frying-pan.
In these days of war everybody can see a camp.
Every one who stays at home has a brother or a
son or a lover quartered in one of the myriad tents
that have blossomed with the daffodil-season all over
our green fields of the North. I need not, then,
describe our encampment in detail, — its guardtent
in advance, — its guns in battery, — its flagstaff,
— its companies quartered in streets with
droll and fanciful names, — its officers' tents in the
rear, at right angles to the lines of company tents,
— its kitchens, armed with Captain Vielé's capital
army cooking-stoves, — its big marquees, “The
White House” and “Fort Pickens,” for the lodging
and messing of the new artillery company, — its
barbers' shops, — its offices. The same, more or
less well arranged, can be seen in all the rendezvous
where the armies are now assembling. Instead of
such description, then, let me give the log of a
single day at our camp.
JOURNAL OF A DAY AT CAMP CAMERON, BY PRIVATE
W., COMPANY I.
Boom!
I would rather not believe it; but it is — yes, it
is — the morning gun, uttering its surly “Hullo!”
to sunrise.
Yes, — and, to confirm my suspicions, here rattle
in the drums and pipe in the fifes, wooing us to
get up, get up, with music too peremptory to be
harmonious.
I rise up sur mon séant and glance about me. I,
Private W., chance, by reason of sundry chances,
to be a member of a company recently largely recruited
and bestowed all together in a big marquee.
As I lift myself up, I see others lift themselves up
on those straw bags we kindly call our mattresses.
The tallest man of the regiment, Sergeant K., is
on one side of me. On the other side I am separated
from two of the fattest men of the regiment
by Sergeant M., another excellent fellow, prime
cook and prime forager.
We are all presently on our pins, — K. on those
lengthy continuations of his, and the two stout
gentlemen on their stout supporters. The deep
sleepers are pulled up from those abysses of
slumber where they had been choking, gurgling,
strangling, death-rattling all night. There is for a
moment a sound of legs rushing into pantaloons
and arms plunging into jackets.
Then, as the drums and fifes whine and clatter
orderly, and fierce in the morning sunshine gleams
his moustache, — one month's growth this blessed
day. “Fall in, for roll-call!” he cries, in a ringing
voice. The orderly can speak sharp, if need be.
We obey. Not “Walk in!” “March in!”
“Stand in!” is the order; but “Fall in!” as
sleepy men must. Then the orderly calls off our
hundred. There are several boyish voices which
reply, several comic voices, a few mean voices,
and some so earnest and manly and alert that one
says to himself, “Those are the men for me, when
work is to be done!” I read the character of my
comrades every morning in each fellow's monosyllable
“Here!”
When the orderly is satisfied that not one of us
has run away and accepted a Colonelcy from the
Confederate States since last roll-call, he notifies
those unfortunates who are to be on guard for the
next twenty-four hours of the honor and responsibility
placed upon their shoulders. Next he tells
us what are to be the drills of the day. Then,
“Right face! Dismissed! Break ranks! March!”
With ardor we instantly seize tin basins, soap,
and towels, and invade a lovely oak-grove at the
rear and left of our camp. Here is a delicious
spring into which we have fitted a pump. The
sylvan scene becomes peopled with “National
Guards Washing,” — a scene meriting the notice
of Art as much as any “Diana and her Nymphs.”
But we have no Poussin to paint us in the dewy
we are at all times and seasons.
After this beau idéal of a morning toilet comes
the ante-prandial drill. Lieutenant W. arrives, and
gives us a little appetizing exercise in “Carry
arms!” “Support arms!” “By the right flank,
march!” “Double quick!”
Breakfast follows. My company messes somewhat
helter-skelter in a big tent. We have very
tolerable rations. Sometimes luxuries appear of
potted meats and hermetical vegetables, sent us by
the fond New-Yorkers. Each little knot of fellows,
too, cooks something savory. Our table-furniture
is not elegant, our plates are tin, there is no silver
in our forks; but à la guerre, comme à la guerre.
Let the scrubs growl! Lucky fellows, if they suffer
no worse hardships than this!
By and by, after breakfast, come company drills,
bayonet practice, battalion drills, and the heavy
work of the day. Our handsome Colonel, on a
nice black nag, manœuvres his thousand men of
the line-companies on the parade for two or three
hours. Two thousand legs step off accurately together.
Two thousand pipe-clayed cross-belts —
whitened with infinite pains and waste of time, and
offering a most inviting mark to a foe — restrain
the beating bosoms of a thousand braves, as they —
the braves, not the belts — go through the most
intricate evolutions unerringly. Watching these
battalion movements, Private W., perhaps, goes off
and inscribes in his journal, — “Any clever, prompt
a notion of time, and a voice of command, can be
a tactician. It is pure pedantry to claim that the
manœuvring of troops is difficult: it is not difficult,
if the troops are quick and steady. But to be a general,
with patience and purpose and initiative, —
ah!” thinks Private W., “for that you must have
the man of genius; and in this war he already begins
to appear out of Massachusetts and elsewhere.”
Private W. avows without fear that about noon,
at Camp Cameron, he takes a hearty dinner, and
with satisfaction. Private W. has had his feasts in
cot and chateau in Old World and New. It is the
conviction of said private that nowhere and nowhen
has he expected his ration with more interest,
and remembered it with more affection, than here.
In the middle hours of the day, it is in order to
get a pass to go to Washington, or to visit some
of the camps, which now, in the middle of May,
begin to form a cordon around the city. Some of
these I may criticise before the end of this paper.
Our capital seems arranged by nature to be protected
by fortified camps on the circuit of its hills.
It may be made almost a Verona, if need be. Our
brother regiments have posts nearly as charming
as our own, in these fair groves and on these fair
slopes on either side of us.
In the afternoon comes target practice, skirmishing-drill,
more company- or recruit-drill, and, at
half past five, our evening parade. Let me not forget
tent-inspection, at four, by the officer of the
day, when our band plays deliciously.
At evening parade all Washington appears. A
regiment of ladies, rather indisposed to beauty, observe
us. Sometimes the Dons arrive, — Secretaries
of State, of War, of Navy, — or military Dons,
bestriding prancing steeds, but bestriding them
as if “'t was not their habit often of an afternoon.”
All which, — the bad teeth, pallid skins, and rustic
toilets of the fair, and the very moderate horsemanship
of the brave, — privates, standing at ease
in the ranks, take note of, not cynically, but as
men of the world.
Wondrous gymnasts are some of the Seventh,
and after evening parade they often give exhibitions
of their prowess to circles of admirers. Muscle
has not gone out, nor nerve, nor activity, if these
athletes are to be taken as the types or even as the
leaders of the young city-bred men of our time.
All the feats of strength and grace of the gymnasiums
are to be seen here, and show to double
advantage in the open air.
Then comes sweet evening. The moon rises.
It seems always full moon at Camp Cameron.
Every tent becomes a little illuminated pyramid.
Cooking-fires burn bright along the alleys. The
boys lark, sing, shout, do all those merry things
that make the entertainment of volunteer service.
The gentle moon looks on, mild and amused, the
fairest lady of all that visit us.
At last, when the songs have been sung and the
hundred rumors of the day discussed, at ten the
intrusive drums and scolding fifes get together
tattoo. The Seventh Regiment begins to peel for
bed: at all events, Private W. does; for said W.
takes, when he can, precious good care of his cuticle,
and never yields to the lazy and unwholesome
habit of soldiers, — sleeping in the clothes. At
taps — half past ten — out go the lights. If they
do not, presently comes the sentry's peremptory
command to put them out. Then, and until the
dawn of another day, a cordon of snorers inside of
a cordon of sentries surrounds our national capital.
The outer cordon sounds its “All 's well”; and
the inner cordon, slumbering, echoes it.
And that is the history of any day at Camp
Cameron. It is monotonous, it is not monotonous,
it is laborious, it is lazy, it is a bore, it is a lark, it
is half war, half peace, and totally attractive, and
not to be dispensed with from one's experience in
the nineteenth century.
OUR ADVANCE INTO VIRGINIA.
Meantime the weeks went on. May 23d arrived.
Lovely creatures with their taper fingers had been
brewing a flag for us. Shall I say that its red
stripes were celestial rosy as their cheeks, its white
stripes virgin white as their brows, its blue field
cerulean as their eyes, and its stars scintillating as
the beams of the said peepers? Shall I say this?
If I were a poet, like Jeff Davis and each and
every editor of each and every newspaper in our
I have said it.
So the young ladies of New York — including,
I hope, her who made my sandwiches for the march
hither — had been making us a flag, as they have
made us havelocks, pots of jelly, bundles of lint,
flannel dressing-gowns, embroidered slippers for a
rainy day in camp, and other necessaries of the
soldier's life.
May 23d was the day we were to get this sweet
symbol of good-will. At evening parade appeared
General Thomas, as the agent of the ladies, the
donors, with a neat speech on a clean sheet of
paper. He read it with feeling; and Private W.,
who has his sentimental moments, avows that he
was touched by the General's earnest manner and
patriotic words. Our Colonel responded with his
neat speech, very apropos. The regiment then
made its neat speech, nine cheers and a roar of
tigers, — very brief and pointed.
There had been a note of preparation in General
Thomas's remarks, — a “Virginia, cave canem!”
And before parade was dismissed, we saw our officers
holding parley with the Colonel.
Something in the wind! As I was strolling off
to see the sunset and the ladies on parade, I began
to hear great irrepressible cheers bursting from the
streets of the different companies.
“Orders to be ready to march at a moment's
notice!” — so I learned presently from dozens of
overjoyed fellows. “Harper's Ferry!” says one.
only Richmond will content a third. And some
could hardly be satisfied short of the hope of a
breakfast in Montgomery.
What a happy thousand were the line-companies!
How their suppressed ardors stirred! No want of
fight in these lads! They may be rather luxurious
in their habits, for camp-life. They may be a little
impatient of restraint. They may have — as the
type regiment of militia — the type faults of militia
on service. But a desire to dodge a fight is not
one of these faults.
Every man in camp was merry, except two hundred
who were grim. These were the two artillery
companies, ordered to remain in guard of our camp.
They swore as if Camp Cameron were Flanders.
I by rights belonged with these malecontent and
objurgating gentlemen; but a chronicler has privileges,
and I got leave to count myself into the
Eighth Company, my old friend Captain Shumway's.
We were to move, about midnight, in
light marching order, with one day's rations.
It has been always full moon at our camp. This
night was full moon at its fullest, — a night more
perfect than all perfection, mild, dewy, refulgent.
At one o'clock the drum beat; we fell into ranks,
and marched quietly off through the shadowy trees
of the lane, into the highway.
ACROSS THE LONG BRIDGE.
I have heretofore been proud of my individuality,
and resisted, so far as one may, all the world's attempts
to merge me in the mass. In pluribus unum
has been my motto. But whenever I march with
the regiment, my pride is that I lose my individuality,
that I am merged, that I become a part of
a machine, a mere walking gentleman, a No. 1 or a
No. 2, front rank or rear rank, file-leader or file-closer.
The machine is so steady and so mighty,
it moves with such musical cadence and such brilliant
show, that I enjoy it entirely as the unum and
lose myself gladly as a pluribus.
Night increases this fascination. The outer
world is vague in the moonlight. Objects out of
our ranks are lost. I see only glimmering steel
and glittering buttons and the light-stepping forms
of my comrades. Our array and our step connect
us. We move as one man. A man made up of
a thousand members and each member a man, is a
grand creature, — particularly when you consider
that he is self-made. And the object of this self-made
giant, men-man, is to destroy another like
himself, or the separate pigmy members of another
such giant. We have failed to put ourselves —
heads, arms, legs, and wills — together as a unit
for any purpose so thoroughly as to snuff out a
similar unit. Up to 1861, it seems that the business
of war compacts men best.
Well, the Seventh, a compact projectile, was
Just a month ago, “in such a night as this,” we
made our first promenade through the enemy's
country. The moon of Annapolis — why should
we not have our ominous moon, as those other
fellows had their sun of Austerlitz? — the moon of
Annapolis shone over us. No epithets are too
fine or too complimentary for such a luminary, and
there was no dust under her rays.
So we pegged along to Washington and across
Washington, — which at that point consists of
Willard's Hotel, few other buildings being in sight.
A hag in a nightcap reviewed us from an upper
window as we tramped by.
Opposite that bald block, the Washington Monument,
and opposite what was of more importance
to us, a drove of beeves putting beef on their
bones in the seedy grounds of the Smithsonian
Institution, we were halted while the New Jersey
brigade — some three thousand of them — trudged
by, receiving the complimentary fire of our line as
they passed. New Jersey is not so far from New
York but that the dialects of the two can understand
each other. Their respective slangs, though
peculiar, are of the same genus. By the end of
this war, I trust that these distinctions of locality
will be quite annulled.
We began to feel like an army as these thousands
thronged by us. This was evidently a movement
in force. We rested an hour or more by the
road. Mounted officers galloping along down the
lines kept up the excitement.
At last we had the word to fall in again and
march. It is part of the simple perfection of the
machine, a regiment, that, though it drops to pieces
for a rest, it comes together instantly for a start,
and nobody is confused or delayed. We moved
half a mile farther, and presently a broad pathway
of reflected moonlight shone up at us from the
Potomac.
No orders, at this, came from the Colonel, “Attention,
battalion! Be sentimental!” Perhaps
privates have no right to perceive the beautiful.
But the sections in my neighborhood murmured
admiration. The utter serenity of the night was
most impressive. Cool and quiet and tender the
moon shone upon our ranks. She does not change
her visage, whether it be lovers or burglars or
soldiers who use her as a lantern to their feet.
The Long Bridge thus far has been merely a
shabby causeway with water-ways and draws.
Shabby, — let me here pause to say that in Virginia
shabbiness is the grand universal law, and neatness
the spasmodic exception, attained in rare spots, an
æon beyond their Old Dominion age.
The Long Bridge has thus far been a totally unhistoric
and prosaic bridge. Roads and bridges
are making themselves of importance, and shining
up into sudden renown in these times. The Long
Bridge has done nothing hitherto except carry passengers
on its back across the Potomac. Hucksters,
planters, dry-goods drummers, members of Congress,
et ea genera omnia, have here gone and come
appears, some sour little imp — the very reverse of
a “sweet little cherub” — took toll of every man
as he passed, — a heavy toll, namely, every man's
whole store of Patriotism and Loyalty. Every
man — so it seems — who passed the Long Bridge
was stripped of his last dollar of Amor Patriæ, and
came to Washington, or went home, with a waistcoat-pocket
full of bogus in change. It was our
business now to open the bridge and see it clear,
and leave sentries along to keep it permanently free
for Freedom.
There is a mile of this Long Bridge. We seemed
to occupy the whole length of it, with our files
opened to diffuse the weight of our column. We
were not now the tired and sleepy squad which just
a moon ago had trudged along the railroad to the
Annapolis Junction, looking up a Capital and a
Government, perhaps lost.
By the time we touched ground across the bridge,
dawn was breaking, — a good omen for poor old
sleepy Virginia. The moon, as bright and handsome
as a new twenty-dollar piece, carried herself
straight before us, — a splendid oriflamme.
Lucky is the private who marches with the van!
It may be the post of more danger, but it is also
the post of less dust. My throat, therefore, and my
eyes and beard, wore the less Southern soil when
we halted half a mile beyond the bridge, and let
sunrise overtake us.
Nothing men can do — except picnics, with ladies
as soldiering. As soon as the Seventh halt anywhere,
or move anywhere, or camp anywhere, they
resolve themselves into a grand tableau. Their
own ranks should supply their own Horace Vernet.
Our groups were never more entertaining than at
this halt by the roadside on the Alexandria road.
Stacks of guns make a capital framework for drapery,
and red blankets dot in the lights most artistically.
The fellows lined the road with their gay
array, asleep on the rampage, on the lounge, and
nibbling at their rations.
By and by, when my brain had taken in as much
of the picturesque as it could stand, it suffered the
brief congestion known as a nap. I was suddenly
awaked by the rattle of a horse's hoofs. Before I
had rubbed my eyes the rider was gone. His sharp
tidings had stayed behind him. Ellsworth was
dead, — so he said hurriedly, and rode on. Poor
Ellsworth! a fellow of genius and initiative! He
had still so much of the boy in him, that he rattled
forward boyishly, and so died. Si monumentum
requiris, look at his regiment. It was a brilliant
stroke to levy it; and if it does worthily, its young
Colonel will not have lived in vain.
As the morning hours passed, we learned that
we were the rear-guard of the left wing of the army
advancing into Virginia. The Seventh, as the best
organized body, acted as reserve to this force. It
did n't wish to be in the rear; but such is the penalty
of being reliable for an emergency. Fellow-soldier,
if you wish to see the fun in the van!
When the road grew too hot for us, on account
of the fire of sunshine in our rear, we jumped over
the fence into the Race-Course, a big field beside
us, and there became squatter sovereigns all day.
I shall be a bore if I say again what a pretty figure
we cut in this military picnic, with two long
lines of blankets draped on bayonets for parasols.
The New Jersey brigade were meanwhile doing
workie work on the ridge just beyond us. The
road and railroad to Alexandria follow the general
course of the river southward along the level.
This ridge to be fortified is at the point where the
highway bends from west to south. The works
were intended to serve as an advanced tête du pont, —
a bridge-head, with a very long neck connecting
it with the bridge. That fine old Fabius, General
Scott, had no idea of flinging an army out broadcast
into Virginia, and, in the insupposable case
that it had turned tail, leaving it no defended passage
to run away by.
This was my first view of a field-work in construction,
— also, my first hand as a laborer at a
field-work. I knew glacis and counterscarp on
paper; also, on paper, superior slope, banquette,
and the other dirty parts of a redoubt. Here they
were, not on paper. A slight wooden scaffolding
determined the shape of the simple work; and
when I arrived, a thousand Jerseymen were working,
not at all like Jerseymen, with picks, spades,
Virginia, shovelling up Virginia, for Virginia's
protection against pseudo-Virginians.
I swarmed in for a little while with our Paymaster,
picked a little, spaded a little, shovelled a
little, took a hand to my great satisfaction at
earth-works, and for my efforts I venture to suggest
that Jersey City owes me its freedom in
a box, and Jersey State a basket of its finest
Clicquot.
Is my gentle reader tired of the short marches
and frequent halts of the Seventh? Remember,
gentle reader, that you must be schooled by such
alphabetical exercises to spell bigger words — skirmish,
battle, defeat, rout, massacre — by and by.
Well, — to be Xenophontic, — from the Race-Course
that evening we marched one stadium, one
parasang, to a cedar-grove up the road. In the
grove is a spring worthy to be called a fountain,
and what I determined by infallible indications to
be a lager-bier saloon. Saloon no more! War is
no respecter of localities. Be it Arlington House,
the seedy palace of a Virginia Don, — be it the
humbler, but seedy, pavilion where the tired Teuton
washes the dust of Washington away from his
tonsils, — each must surrender to the bold soldierboy.
Exit Champagne and its goblet; exit lager
and its mug; enter whiskey-and-water in a tin pot.
Such are the horrors of civil war!
And now I must cut short my story, for graver
matters press. As to the residence of the Seventh
how they endured the hardship of a bivouac on soft
earth and the starvation of coffee sans milk, — how
they digged manfully in the trenches by gangs all
these two laborious days, — with what supreme
artistic finish their work was achieved, — how they
chopped off their corns with axes, as they cleared
the brushwood from the glacis, — how they blistered
their hands, — how they chafed that they
were not lunging with battailous steel at the breasts
of the minions of the oligarchs, — how Washington,
seeing the smoke of burning rubbish, and hearing
dropping shots of target-practice, or of novices
with the musket shooting each other by accident,
— how Washington, alarmed, imagined a battle,
and went into panic accordingly, — all this, is it
not written in the daily papers?
On the evening of the 26th, the Seventh travelled
back to Camp Cameron in a smart shower. Its service
was over. Its month was expired. The troops
ordered to relieve it had arrived. It had griven the
other volunteers the benefit of a month's education
at its drills and parades. It had enriched poor
Washington to the tune of fifty thousand dollars.
Ah, Washington! that we, under Providence and
after General Butler, saved from the heel of Secession!
Ah, Washington, why did you charge us so
much for our milk and butter and strawberries?
The Seventh, then, after a month of delightful
duty, was to be mustered out of service, and take
new measures, if it would, to have a longer and a
larger share in the war.
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS.
I took advantage of the day of rest after our
return to have a gallop about the outposts. Arlington
Heights had been the spot whence the
alarmists threatened us daily with big thunder and
bursting bombs. I was curious to see the region
that had had Washington under its thumb.
So Private W., tired of his foot-soldiering, got
a quadruped under him, and felt like a cavalier
again. The horse took me along the tow-path of
the Cumberland Canal, as far as the redoubts where
we had worked our task. Then I turned up the
hill, took a look at the camp of the New York
Twenty-Fifth at the left, and rode along for Arlington
House.
Grand name! and the domain is really quite
grand, but ill-kept. Fine oaks make beauty without
asking favors. Fine oaks and a fair view make
all the beauty of Arlington. It seems that this old
establishment, like many another old Virginian,
had claimed its respectability for its antiquity, and
failed to keep up to the level of the time. The
road winds along through the trees, climbing to
fairer and fairer reaches of view over the plain of
Washington. I had not fancied that there was any
such lovely site near the capital. But we have
not yet appreciated what Nature has done for us
there. When civilization once makes up its mind
to colonize Washington, all this amphitheatre of
hills will blossom with structures of sublimest gingerbread.
Arlington House is the antipodes of gingerbread,
except that it is yellow, and disposed to crumble.
It has a pompous propylon of enormous stuccoed
columns. Any house smaller than Blenheim would
tail on insignificantly after such a frontispiece.
The interior has a certain careless, romantic, decayed-gentleman
effect, wholly Virginian. It was
enlivened by the uniforms of staff-officers just now,
and as they rode through the trees of the approach
and by the tents of the New York Eighth,
encamped in the grove to the rear, the tableau was
brilliantly warlike. Here, by the way, let me
pause to ask, as a horseman, though a foot-soldier,
why generals and other gorgeous fellows make
such guys of their horses with trappings. If the
horse is a screw, cover him thick with saddle-cloths,
girths, cruppers, breast-bands, and as much
brass and tinsel as your pay will enable you to
buy; but if not a screw, let his fair proportions
be seen as much as may be, and don't bother a
lover of good horse-flesh to eliminate so much uniform
before he can see what is beneath.
From Arlington I rode to the other encampments,
— the Sixty-Ninth, Fifth, and Twenty-Eighth,
all of New York, — and heard their several
stories of alarms and adventures. This completed
the circuit of the new fortification of the Great
Camp. Washington was now a fortress. The
capital was out of danger, and therefore of no further
interest to anybody. The time had come for
myself and my regiment to leave it by different
ways.
“PARTANT POUR LA SYRIE.”
I should have been glad to stay and see my
comrades through to their departure; but there
was a Massachusetts man down at Fortress Monroe,
Butler by name, — has any one heard of him?
— and to this gentleman it chanced that I was to
report myself. So I packed my knapsack, got my
furlough, shook hands with my fellows, said good
by to Camp Cameron, and was off, two days after
our month's service was done.
FAREWELL TO THE SEVENTH.
Under Providence, Washington owes its safety,
1st, To General Butler, whose genius devised the
circumvention of Baltimore and its rascal rout, and
whose utter bravery executed the plan; — he is
the Grand Yankee of this little period of the war.
2d, To the other Most Worshipful Grand Yankees
of the Massachusetts regiment who followed their
leader, as he knew they would, discovered a forgotten
colony called Annapolis, and dashed in
there, asking no questions. 3d, And while I gladly
yield the first places to this General and his men,
I put the Seventh in, as last, but not least, in
saving the capital. Character always tells. The
Seventh, by good, hard, faithful work at drill,
had established its fame as the most thorough militia
regiment in existence. Its military and moral
character were excellent. The mere name of the
the field were a ball-room. There were myriads
eager to march; but they had not made ready beforehand.
Yes, the Seventh had its important
share in the rescue. Without our support, whether
our leaders tendered it eagerly or hesitatingly,
General Butler's position at Annapolis would have
been critical, and his forced march to the capital a
forlorn hope, — heroic, but desperate.
So, honor to whom honor is due.
Here I must cut short my story. So good by
to the Seventh, and thanks for the fascinating
month I have passed in their society. In this
pause of the war our camp-life has been to me
as brilliant as a permanent picnic.
Good by to Company I, and all the fine fellows,
rough and smooth, cool old hands and recruits verdant
but ardent! Good by to our Lieutenants, to
whom I owe much kindness! Good by, the Orderly,
so peremptory on parade, so indulgent off!
Good by, everybody!
And so in haste, I close.
| Life in the open air | |