AT Newport News the Regiment immediately embarked on the transport steamer Belvidere for Acquia Creek, thence by railroad it was forwarded to Stafford Court House, near Fredericksburg, and on the 22d of August encamped in a pleasant grove not far from Barnett’s Ford, on the upper Rappahannock, in which agreeable and comparatively salubrious locality we enjoyed a welcome rest of several days, but we were very hungry. Our position was at too great distance to receive regular supplies from Burnside at Acquia, and General Pope did not consider bases of supplies of any importance.

On Saturday, the 23d, distant firing was heard in the direction of the upper fords of the Rappahannock. On Tuesday, the 26th, one wagon came up for each regiment, and early on the 27th we moved along the river, past roads leading to Kemper’s and Kelly’s Fords, as far as Bealton, on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, then up the railroad track towards Manassas. The sound of artillery was often audible in advance.

This march was made through a country parched by the heat of a Southern mid-summer, the troops always enveloped in clouds of dust, the few wells and watering-places constantly in possession of a struggling crowd which barred out the weak who needed water most, and it cannot be a matter for surprise, but indeed it was a matter for grief, that hundreds of the soldiers fell exhausted by the wayside, to die in the fields, or in prison to suffer what was worse than death.

That evening we bivouacked near Warrenton Junction, in a large wood, the men as they came in throwing themselves upon the ground, hastening to get their needed sleep. The officers (who could not draw rations) felt the want of food even more than the men. The field and staff mess could offer only some wretched cakes of corn bread.

On the morning of the 28th, before many of us had fairly tasted sleep, we were aroused with orders to prepare for the march. The night was yet intensely dark and it was difficult to find the way out from the wood. The staff officers who, guided by our camp-fires, came to lead us out upon the road, a distance of three hundred yards—were obliged to acknowledge their inability to do so. At last a negro servant of the Surgeon, escorted by soldiers having lighted candles in the muzzles of their rifles, guided the Regiment and the brigade out of the wood to the roadway. Here we found the way blocked by a battery, and resort was had to torches, by whose light the men, in single file, picked their way through the obstructions. Then there was a long wait for Sykes’ division, and after his files had flitted by like shadows in the darkness, there came a grey daylight through the fog, by which, with great trouble we were able to move slowly on our route, winding in and out among the wagons which also had been impeded by thick darkness. At length we moved pretty rapidly in the direction of Manassas, following the line of the railway. At Catlett’s a train of cars was seen which had been fired and partially destroyed; near by we passed a headquarters camp, said to have been General Pope’s, which had evidently been raided by the enemy. At intervals we could hear the sound of fighting, at the north and northeast, sometimes pretty near, and we were hurried forward as rapidly as possible. At Kettle Run we saw evidences of the battle which Hooker had fought there with Ewell’s corps, and saw many prisoners and wounded men. Here the fighting seemed to be northwest from us; as we crossed Broad Run, about sundown, it was nearly due north.

A day of hot sun and stifling dust was this 28th day of August; on every side were evidences that there had been heavy fighting. The railroad track had been torn up and its bridges destroyed, clearly by the rebels. The trains of wagons, the batteries, the troops of all arms that we passed or that passed us this day, were wonderful for number.

We encamped upon a large plain, a half mile beyond the Run, while the sound of artillery and musketry on our left was very distinctly heard.

At dawn next morning, Friday, August 29th, we marched toward Manassas Junction. Rapid and fierce fighting on our left, in the direction of Bull Run. At the Junction, what had been a long train of luggage cars, loaded with army equipments, clothing, and supplies, was found a heap of smouldering ruins, and the track and bridges had been destroyed and were yet burning. Looking to the north the smoke of battle could be plainly discerned, marked by white puffs of bursting shells, and the sound of artillery was faintly heard; a long line of dust extended from Thoroughfare Gap into and apparently beyond the field of battle.

After a brief halt on the heights of Manassas, we countermarched and took the road to Gainesville, which here is nearly parallel to the Manassas Gap Railroad; we passed McDowell’s corps, lying along the roadside a mile or so from the Junction. They cheered and told us to “go in” and said that they had enough of it, etc. All this time we had had no chance to eat or drink, and nobody seemed to understand our movements. The wildest rumors were afloat; now that Pope was cut off and captured—now that Jackson was surrounded, pressed by Siegel, and trying to escape by Aldie—now that there was a large force in our rear, and that we were cut off from Washington. Then, and this seemed true, that Lee or Longstreet was bringing up reinforcements to Jackson by Thoroughfare Gap, and that Siegel, or McDowell, or Banks, or somebody unknown, was trying to prevent this movement.

After passing McDowell’s men we marched rapidly, and when five and a half or six miles out from Manassas Junction, came to a bold elevation of cleared land, extending from the road to the railway, and on a line nearly parallel could see a long line of dust marking the line upon which the enemy was moving; and when there were openings in the wood, which for the most part masked the moving column, we could with a good glass see their artillery, infantry, and trains.

The cloud of dust which revealed the march of the enemy along our front was lost on the right, where it passed over a low wooded ridge, beyond which was seen the battle smoke. The guns could be heard only faintly by us in our high position, and must have been inaudible in the woods of the valley below.

Upon this hill we were deployed, and guns were brought up and placed in position. Our brigade (Griffin’s) started out on the right flank, moved over the railroad track and for some distance into the woods, with skirmishers thrown out in the front and on the flank, but finding no practicable way through the woods returned and drew up on the hill. Two or three regiments were deployed to the front as skirmishers and sent down the hill and across the valley, as if to feel of the enemy, whose column continued to pour down from Thoroughfare, turning to the northeast at a point about two miles away—at or near Gainesville.

Generals Porter and McDowell, with other generals and their staff, stood in a group; the infantry was closed in mass and the batteries ready for action when, from a corn-field in the flank of the marching column in the valley, there suddenly curled a wreath of smoke, and then another and another. A round shot buried itself in the face of the hill, throwing up a cloud of dust; then one after the other two shells burst close to the general officers, killing two men of our brigade. Our own batteries promptly replied and silenced the guns in front, but they opened again further to the right with such a rake upon our infantry as to make it prudent to withdraw them to the cover of the ground. Evidently our General intended an attack, and everything was ready; but the remonstrances of Morell and Marshall prevailed upon Porter to countermand the order, and we finally bivouacked upon the hill.

On the 30th, before day-break, we took the road with orders to proceed to Centreville. Our brigade was to cover the rear in this movement, and of course was preceded in the march by the supply train of the corps. Before breakfast we had crossed Bull Run at Blackburn’s Ford. It seems that orders had been sent to change the destination of our corps, but the officer charged with their delivery having followed back the column until he reached the trains, gave orders to the quartermaster in charge of them to continue on to Centreville, and either did not know or entirely forgot that our Brigade was beyond the wagons; whence it happened that while the rest of our corps was in battle on the Gainesville road, we were waiting at Centreville, wondering where they were, hearing the roar of battle as it drew nearer and nearer to our hillside, and constantly expecting orders.

At about four o’clock we started for the field of battle. Almost immediately we came upon swarms of stragglers, who had left their ranks, and who were full of stories of regiments all cut up, as well as of their individual prowess. Then came crowds of wounded men, ambulances, wagons, empty caissons, until at last the road was fairly blocked with officers and men in no order, horses, wagons, and batteries. Men were running, panting, cursing, and some worn out and exhausted had thrown themselves upon the ground by the roadside utterly indifferent to their fate; and now we knew that this was the route of an exhausted army, and that our duty was to guard their rear.

Forcing our way through all, just as we came to the well-ordered but retreating lines, night came on; and although there were yet sounds of desultory firing, and occasional shot or shells plunging and exploding about us, the fight was over, and in the gloom of night we marched slowly back with the throng of troops to the heights of Centreville.

Next morning, Sunday, August 31st, 1862, it was raining hard. The scene of confusion about us beggars description, and everybody was hungry, wet, and dispirited. Before noon, however, order began to come out of chaos. Men found their colors, and regiments and brigades their appointed stations, and our Brigade moved out upon the Gainesville Pike to receive the first onset of the enemy. Our position was on the right of the turnpike, and the line extended north and east toward Fairfax, with a strong picket two or three hundred yards in front, and here we passed the afternoon in quiet.

All day Monday, September 1st, trains of ambulances, under flags of truce, were going out to the field of battle and returning loaded with wounded men. The weather continued cold and rainy, with a northeast wind. Toward evening the sound of fighting was heard in the direction of Chantilly. The men were wet to the skin, rations exhausted, no fires allowed. Surgeons coming in from the battle-field reported the enemy in great force a very short distance out on the turnpike, and on the old Warrenton Road, waiting the order to attack. The night was passed in misery; the hazard of our position forbade sleep, and comfort was impossible. The army had moved from Centreville, in our rear, and at 3 A. M. we drew in our pickets and moved quietly away.

Looking back as we left Centreville, we saw the enemy coming into the town in great numbers, but they made no attack. At Fairfax Court House we met large bodies of troops; thence, taking a northeast course, we passed Vienna, and toward evening struck the Leesburg Turnpike. Beyond Levinsville we were met by General McClellan, who was enthusiastically greeted by the troops, and at 11 P. M. we bivouacked at Langley’s, after a march of twenty-eight miles.

Wednesday, September 3d, we encamped on Miners Hill, near Falls Church, which was the locality of Porter’s command previous to the Peninsula campaign.

Our active campaign with the army of Virginia comprised only ten days as almanacs count time, but these were days so full of excitement and of incident that memory recalls a whirl of occurrences and events, succeeding so rapidly one to another that it is with difficulty one can separate them. There are pictures, but they are changing with the rapidity of those of the kaleidoscope.

One scene constantly recurring, not only on this, but on many another march, presents to us again the array of sick or exhausted men, who strewed the route of the hurried columns—their pinched and worn faces—their eyes half closed, gazing into space—their bodies crouched or cramped with pain, supported against trees or fences, or lying prone upon the ground; the men almost always clinging to their rifles. “If one had told me yesterday,” said an officer on his first march with the army, “that I could pass one man so stricken, and not stop to aid or console him, I should have resented the charge as a slander, and already I have passed hundreds.” Many, many such, necessarily abandoned to their fate, crept into the woods and died. Under repeated orders, all men absent and not accounted for, should have been reported as deserters, but Captains were more merciful than the orders, and few were found to brand as ignominious the names of men who deserved rather to be canonized as martyrs.

Another memory is of a gallant Captain of artillery, whose battery marched just in advance of our Regiment—of an aide galloping back and wheeling to the Captain’s side to communicate an order—the quick question, “where?” a short answer, a note of a bugle, and the Captain dashes off to our left, followed by his battery—the thunderous rumble of caissons and gun-carriages dying away as they pass out of our sight over a swell of land. It is strange that as this scene is recalled where a fellow-soldier rushed to immediate death, a prominent feature of the picture is the vivid color of the mass of blue flowers which clothed the entire field through which his battery dashed away from our column.

Another turn of the mnemonic glass, and we see the country about Manassas trodden into a vast highway. Just there Stuart had captured a train laden with quartermaster’s stores, and the ground all about was strewn with broken cases and what had been their contents—new uniforms, underclothing, hats and shoes, from which men helped themselves at will, leaving the old where they found the new. Near by, on the railroad track, waited a long train loaded with sick and wounded—the cars packed full, and many lying on the top unsheltered in the sun.

Yet again, and we are in sight of Thoroughfare, and see the long lines of dust revealing the march of Lee’s army down towards us from the Gap, and we remember the applause we gave when the first shell from Hazlitt’s parrot guns exploded exactly in a line of rebel infantry (scattering them as is rarely done except in cheap engravings), and how little we appreciated the like accuracy of aim by which an enemy’s shot killed two men in one of our own regiments.

And again there comes a mental photograph, date and locality indistinct, which represents nineteen officers gathered about a sumptuous repast, comprising three loaves of old bread, a fragment of cheese and a half canteen of water, almost as stale as the bread, and the careful watch of Field upon Staff and Staff upon Line, to see that only one swallow of water is taken by each in his turn.

And finally, we stand blocking the way to gaze upon a wrecked omnibus, inscribed—“Georgetown and Navy Yard”—one of many vehicles impressed in Washington and sent out as ambulances, and which, after reviving in us memories of civilization, was to become a trophy in the hands of the enemy.