THE life of a soldier in war-time is made up of alternating seasons of severe toil and of almost absolute idleness. For a few weeks he will be marched to the utmost limit of endurance—will be set to felling forests—building bridges or roads—constructing defences—and then may follow other weeks when his heaviest occupations are made up of drills, parades, and drawing or eating rations.

Such a time of repose was that which we passed on the banks of the Potomac, near Sharpsburg, guarding the line of the Potomac which for lack of heavy autumnal rains was fordable almost anywhere. Generals, quartermasters and commissaries may have been busy, but it was an idle time for the bulk of the army. Stretching for some fifteen miles along the course of the river, the various corps were encamped in due form, the entire regularity of which could be seen from any neighboring eminence. From some such points one could take into view a landscape brilliant with the colors of autumn made yet brighter by the gleam of the orderly array of white tents, and could see the bounds of each regiment, brigade, or division, as if marked upon a map. At night, before tattoo, the lines of lighted tents would show from a distance, like an army of glow-worms.

To supply the wants of the army of men, another army of wagon trains was kept in constant occupation, and the road was soon covered with fine dust, which rose in clouds when it was stirred by the movements of the trains, or by the horses of mounted officers or men; and as these roads extended everywhere among the camps, we lived all day long in an atmosphere of dirt, which when moved by fresh winds, drove and drifted about to our exceeding discomfort. As the weather grew cooler this was increased by the smoke of the camp-fires, until everybody was habitually clothed in dust, and red about the eyes.

Along the picket lines the men of both armies, having agreed not to fire without previous notice, lolled in the sunshine, chaffed each other over the water, and occasionally traded newspapers even, or union coffee for confederate tobacco.

Once in a while there was a foraging expedition or a reconnoissance across the river. In one of these we captured quite a number of prisoners at Shepardstown, chiefly officers and men absent on leave and visiting their friends in that vicinity. One reconnoissance to Leetown occupied two days, and was followed back right sharply by a strong force of the enemy. We remember particularly the fact that on the advance we found where a long-range shell had exploded among a card party of the enemy’s men, one or two of whom lay dead with the cards still in their hands.

This uneventful life, aided no doubt by prevalent but not serious bilious disorders, developed in our Regiment a general tendency to homesickness and “hypo.” To counteract it several attempts were made to initiate games and athletic exercises among the men, and the officers were requested to set an example to the men by organizing amusements among themselves—but it amounted to nothing, it seemed impossible to induce the men to amuse themselves.

We kept no very careful note of time. One day was pretty much like every other. Sundays were noticeable only for the absence of drills and a little more stupidity. To go home was the height of anybody’s ambition.

Private Callahan, of K Company, sought to be discharged for disability—the disability was beyond question, for he was born with it, and he was told by the Surgeon that he ought not to have accepted the bounty for enlistment; that he “ought to be hung” for doing it, to which somewhat severe criticism the soldier retorted that he “would die first.” It may not be necessary to state that Callahan was Irish. At Fredericksburg he lost a finger and obtained his coveted discharge.

We were so long here that, as the season advanced, we began to construct defences against the weather, and the acting adjutant even dreamed of a log hut, with a real door and real hinges. The only artificer at his command was his negro servant, a man who could admire but could not comprehend long dictionary words. The Adjutant, directing the negro as to the construction of the door frame, told him certain parts were to be perpendicular, others horizontal, and others parallel; but the black man’s face showed no evidence of comprehension, until after a dozen different forms of the same instruction had been resorted to and the master’s patience was exhausted, the idea penetrated the darkened mind of the servant, who turned upon the officer with the pertinent remark, “Why, massa, what you wants is ter have it true, ain’t it?”

New orders of architecture were rapidly developed, and the manufacture of furniture became an extensive occupation. It was quite wonderful what results could be obtained in both of these industries by the use of barrels and hard-bread boxes. Of the barrels we made chimneys and chairs; and of the boxes, tables, washstands, cupboards, and the walls and clapboards of our dwellings.

We were really getting to be very comfortable in the latter days of October, 1862, when the orders began to intimate that we would not live always in that neighborhood. First, our Company C was detached for a guard to the reserve artillery, where it served for ten months. Then, on the 30th, the whole army drew out like a great serpent, and moved away down the Potomac to Harper’s Ferry, crossing the river there, then up on the Virginia side, and along the foot hills of the Blue Ridge.

It was lively times again, and the march was rapid—often forced; but the weather was cool and bracing, and the men were glad of the change. From the 2d to the 15th of November we were on the eastern slopes of the Ridge, and Lee’s army in its western valley, racing each for the advantage over the other.

At each gap there was a lively fight for the control of the pass, but we were always ahead, and possession is as many points in war as it is in law. Holding these passes, our movements could be, to a considerable extent, masked from the observation of the enemy, while his were known to our General, whose object was to keep the army of the enemy strung out to the greatest possible length, and at a favorable moment to pounce upon its centre, divide and conquer it.

With the sound of guns almost always in our ears, we raced away through Snickersville, Middlebury, White Plains, and New Baltimore to Warrenton, with little to eat and plenty of exercise. Near White Plains, on the 8th, we marched all day in a snow-storm, and at night, splashed and chilled, bivouacked in a sprout field, making ourselves as comfortable as might be on three or four inches of snow.

Throughout this march the orders were very stringent against straggling and marauding. No allowance was made for transportation of regimental rations except the haversacks of the soldiers, and on the march in cold weather it is a poor (or good) soldier that does not eat three days’ rations in two. Our changes of base left us often very short of supplies, and it was not in the most amiable mood that we came to our nightly camp.

Acting-quartermaster Dana, hungering for fleshpots, was tempted by the sight of a fat turkey on a barn-yard fence. The road was a by-way, and not a soul in sight. Before he could recall the tenor of the orders, he had covered the bird with his revolver, but at that moment General Butterfield, with his staff and escort, following the abrupt turn of the road, came upon the quartermaster in the very act, and scared the bird, which flopped heavily down from the fence and disappeared. To the General’s angry demand for an explanation, Dana quietly replied that he was about to shoot that “buzzard.”

“Buzzard!” roared the General, “that was a turkey, sir.” “Was it, indeed?” replied the innocent officer; “how fortunate, General, that you came as you did, for in two minutes more I should have shot him for a buzzard.” Dana thought that, amid the laughter which succeeded, he heard the General describe him as an idiot, but he was not sufficiently certain about it to warrant charges against the General for unofficer-like language.

The hurried march from Sharpsburg to Warrenton was fruitful in cases of marauding for court-martial trials, but these courts very generally refused to convict, on the ground that the men had been so ill-supplied from our commissariat, that some irregularity was excusable.

One of our sergeants, a butcher by trade, strolling about the woods, came upon a party of men who had captured and killed, and were about cutting up, a rebel pig. Shocked at the unskilful way in which they were operating, our sergeant volunteered his advice and services, which were gratefully accepted. In the midst of the operation the party was surprised by one of the brigade staff, and the non-commissioned officer, being tried by court-martial, was by its sentence reduced to the ranks and deprived of six months’ pay. The story ends sadly, for his mortification from loss of rank, and possibly his anxiety from fear that his family might suffer from the loss of pay, caused him to droop and die.

One of our men, returning from a private foraging expedition laden with a heavy leg of beef, was captured by the provost guard, and, by order of General Griffin, was kept all day “walking post,” with the beef on his shoulder, in front of the headquarters’ tents. As the General passed his beat he would occasionally entertain him with some question as to the price of beef, or the state of the provision trade, and at retreat the man, minus his beef, was sent down to his regiment “for proper punishment,” which his commanding officer concluded that he had already received.

Yet another soldier was sent to our headquarters by the Colonel of the Ninth Massachusetts, with the statement that he had been arrested for marauding. Upon cross-examination of the culprit it appeared that he had been captured with a quarter of veal in his possession by the provost guard of the Ninth Regiment. A regimental provost guard was a novelty in the army, but when, on further questioning, it appeared that the offending soldier had been compelled to leave the veal at Colonel Guiney’s quarters, the advantage of such an organization in hungry times to the headquarters’ mess was apparent, and our Colonel at once ordered a provost guard to be detailed from the Thirty-second, with orders to capture marauders and turn over their ill-gotten plunder to his cook. Unhappily, within the next twenty-four hours, some high General, whose larder was growing lean, forbade regimental provost guards in general orders.

It was during our stay at Warrenton that General Griffin requested the attendance of Colonel Parker and told him, not as an official communication, but for his personal information, that three officers of the Thirty-second had, during the previous night, taken and killed a sheep, the property of a farmer near by. Of course the Colonel expressed his regret at the occurrence, but he represented to the General that, inasmuch as the officers of our regiment were not generally men of abundant means, and inasmuch as they had received no pay from their Government for several months, and inasmuch as it was forbidden them to obtain food by taking it either from the rations of their men or the property of the enemy, he (the Colonel) would be glad to know how officers were to live? The General, utterly astonished at the state of affairs thus disclosed, asked in return for some suggestion to relieve the difficulty. The suggestion made that officers should be allowed to buy from the commissaries on credit, was, at the request of General Griffin, embodied in a formal written communication to him, and by an order the next day from the headquarters of the army, it became a standing regulation until the end of the war.

On the 10th of November the Army of the Potomac was massed near Warrenton as if a general action was at hand, when everybody was surprised by the announcement of the removal of General McClellan from its command. It was a sad day among the camps. The troops turned out at nine o’clock, bordering the road, each regiment in doubled column, and General McClellan, followed by all the generals with their staffs, a cortege of a hundred or more mounted officers, rode through the lines, saluted and cheered continually.

It happened that the 32d was the first regiment to be reviewed. Being a regiment of soldiers, it was accustomed to salute its officers in a soldierly way, and on this occasion was, probably, the only battalion in the army that did not cheer “Little Mac,” but stood steadily, with arms presented, colors drooping, and drums beating. From the surprised expression on the General’s face, it was evident that for a moment he feared that he had overrated the good-will of his troops. The incident, though really creditable to the Regiment, was considered as a slight to the General, and for a time was the cause of considerable feeling against the 32d. Even the politics of its commander could not prevent its being stigmatized as an “Abolition concern.”

At noon the officers of the Fifth corps were received by General McClellan, who shook hands with all, and at the close of the reception said, his voice broken with emotion: “Gentlemen, I hardly know how to bid you good-bye. We have been so long together that it is very hard. Whatever fate may await me I shall never be able to think of myself except as belonging to the Army of the Potomac. For what you have done history will do you justice—this generation never will. I must say it. ‘Good-bye.’” And so the army parted from the first, the most trusted, and the ablest of its commanders.