LITMIR.BIZ

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the duty and passed the guard in review satisfactorily."

      After three weeks of instruction and comfort at Benton Barracks we received orders to go to the front, and fearing my wife might be disturbed by the movement, I wrote her a consolatory letter:—

      "We have orders to leave to-morrow for Jefferson City. Of course we are in great hurry and have very little time to write letters, even to dear and loving ones at home. We left our homes to fight our country's battles, and naturally we are glad to see a prospect of that kind of work before us. You must not be unduly solicitous or alarmed. You may hear reports of the Twenty-fifth being entirely cut to pieces or all prisoners, even before we are in sight of our enemy. Don't place any confidence in vague rumors. If anything serious takes place, Aleck or I will send early word home, or some of our friends will for us, and if you do not hear, you may be certain we are busy or out of telegraphic or mail communication, and you need not think we are dead or prisoners. Be a true, brave woman. Act worthy of a soldier's wife, and put your trust in God, remembering that He does all things well."

      The trip to Jefferson City was one of many railroad rides the regiment had, all more or less uncomfortable. I wrote, September 16:—

      "I have only time to write you a pencil note at the dépôt. We arrived here safely yesterday at noon, but tired and in bad condition. As we began our march from Benton Barracks a hard rain set in and so continued half the day. Reached the dépôt at 3 P.M., but did not get off till 10 P.M., in crowded cars, little sleep, rain all night, with leaky cars. It took us fifteen hours to run to this place, one hundred and twenty-five miles. Just as we reached our camp it commenced to rain in torrents again and so continued nearly all night. We got the tents out in the rain. If we get through safely with our first experience in hardships of soldiering we will do pretty well."

      Our regiment had been ordered to Jefferson City to form part of the grand army with which Frémont was expected to sweep Price and his forces out of Missouri, and for the next three months and more we were engaged in marching and counter-marching with hardly any fighting worth recording. One of the not unusual experiences of camp life, when the enemy were supposed to be near, I gave my wife while at Jefferson City:—

      "The news here to-day is that Lexington is taken by the secessionists. If that is so we are going to have some warm work in this part of the country. Night before last several shots were heard in the direction of our pickets two or three miles out, which caused the alarm to be sounded and brought out all the regiments of the brigade into line of battle. Some of them came out with a great deal of noise and confusion. Ours came in perfect order and to our full satisfaction; a person fifty yards from our line would not have known that there was any disturbance at all going on in our camp. …

      "I get along tolerably well in daytime, as I keep so busy with other matters I don't have time to get homesick. But last night I had such a sweet dream about little Alice; and then when I woke and found it only a dream, how I wanted to be at home just a little while to see you and her. But let us be of good cheer and hope. I will be with you again."

      This is a frequent topic of my letters. A few weeks later I write:—

      "The parts of your letters about our Alice were the most interesting to me. The dear little darling, how I would love to see her walk. Don't let her forget her papa."

      How my dream recalled one of Campbell's war poems with which I was so familiar in college, "The Soldier's Dream":—

      "The bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lowered."

      In another letter from Jefferson City I write:—

      "You say in your letter received to-day that you are so glad we did not go to Kentucky, because they are going to have fighting there. We were very much disappointed in not being ordered to that very place, and just because there was to be fighting there, and we might aid our brethren in Kentucky. If our Government is worth anything it is worth defending and to maintain it thousands of our lives would be a cheap price. We must all look at it in this light, and do our duty fearlessly."

      A further extract from the same letter:—

      "We have had considerable trouble in having our guards learn their duty as sentinels. This week one of our sentinels was found asleep on his post. We sentenced him to be shot, at a court-martial, but recommended him to clemency; at the same time privately having the colonel understand it was merely formal to make the soldiers more careful hereafter.

      "So yesterday at dress parade the regiment was thrown into a hollow square, the prisoner brought out and sentence pronounced with great gravity, making to all who did not understand it a very solemn scene. The prisoner was remanded to confinement to await execution. This morning the members of the companies all cast lots to decide who should be in the unfortunate squad to shoot him. The ten men who drew the black beans were brought up before headquarters this morning and notified that to-morrow morning at daylight they would have a terrible duty to discharge, without telling them what it was, they readily imagining it.

      "To-day the young man was suffering greatly, but he would not tell where his father or family are, for fear we should write them about it. He says his father told him if he died in battle he would be satisfied, but never to disgrace himself. And he promised that if we would only release him, he would give a good account of himself on the battlefield. He will be released in the morning, and we won't have any sleepy sentinels soon again."

      Five days later I write from Georgetown:—

      "We left Jefferson City Monday morning and came up to Lamine River, fifty miles, where we joined the Eighth and Twenty-fourth Indiana, and Colonel Veatch took command. Tuesday morning we heard there were seven thousand rebels near here [Georgetown]. The colonels of the other regiments wanted Veatch to stay at Lamine, but Colonel Morgan and I urged him on, knowing that we were equal to two to one, or even three, on the prairie with our long-range guns. It was greatly through our urging that Colonel Veatch decided to go forward. We were anxious to have a pure Hoosier fight with the rebels, and were glad of the prospect. We left at 3 P.M., all of us expecting to meet seven thousand at night or in the morning. It was a race, we supposed, for the possession of Georgetown, and by ten o'clock at night we passed over the seventeen miles with our whole force, and entered the town peaceably, without disturbing a citizen from sleep, and slept in the court-house yard. It was our first march on foot and a hard one, but we made it finely. The last two miles were very trying on the men. The only way we kept them up was by riding down the lines and telling the men it was only over the hill to the enemy, and we would have them certain. But no enemy was near, none nearer than Lexington. I don't know how I will feel on the battlefield, but as yet I have no fear of going into a fight.

      "We are at last settled after hard marching, rainy weather, and various hardships. I have been in the saddle nearly all the time for four days. Yesterday I stationed the picket guards, and it took about forty miles' riding, but I am standing it well. It is just what I need. I enjoy it finely, eat largely, and have no dyspepsia [a trouble at home].

      "Near to our camp is a neat little cottage all furnished with everything, nice beds, furniture and carpets, dining-room and kitchen furniture complete. It is the house of a young lawyer, who was married this spring, was a secessionist, was taken prisoner, took the oath of loyalty, violated it, and is now in the rebel army, and subject to be shot if he is ever caught. His wife has fled to her father's. Colonel Veatch has established his brigade headquarters in his house, and we are living in style. I am writing at his desk, using his paper."

      While in Georgetown I gave this picture of the country:—

      "For the first time we are really in the enemy's country, and are seeing the effects of secession and some of the terrible results of war. As we passed through the villages on our march here, the houses were nearly all deserted, the doors closed, and very few persons to be found. A sign of dreariness rested on everything. And when we arrived here at Georgetown, the county seat and numbers about a thousand people, at least one half of the houses were vacant, the stores closed, and business suspended.

      "Georgetown has seen several reverses since the rebellion broke out, being several times in possession of both rebel

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