would long remember. None of them
felt disposed to test his threat, and so he marched his battery alone
down through that rebel country those three hundred and fifty miles and
more into our lines at the mouth of the Rio Grande, bringing off every
gun and every dollar's worth of government property that he could carry,
and what he could not carry he destroyed. He was immediately ordered
north with his battery and justly rewarded with a brigadier-general's
commission.

Early on the morning of the 15th we broke camp and bade farewell to that
first of the world's great armies, the grand old Army of the Potomac.
Need I say that, joyous as was our home-going, there was more than a
pang at the bottom of our hearts as we severed those heroic
associations? A last look at the old familiar camp, a wave of the hand
to the friendly adieus of our comrades, whose good-by glances indicated
that they would gladly have exchanged places with us; that if our hearts
were wrung at going, theirs were, too, at remaining; a last march down
those Falmouth hills, another and last glance at those terrible works
behind Fredericksburg, and we passed out of the army and out of the
soldier into the citizen, for our work was now done and we were soldiers
only in name.

As our train reached Belle-plain, where we were to take boat for
Washington, we noticed a long train of ambulances moving down towards
the landing, and were told they were filled with wounded men, just now
brought off the field at Chancellorsville. There were upward of a
thousand of them. It seems incredible that the wounded should have been
left in those woods during these ten to twelve days since the battle.
How many hundreds perished during that time for want of care nobody
knows, and, more horrible still, nobody knows how many poor fellows were
burned up in the portions of those woods that caught fire from the
artillery. But such is war. Dare any one doubt the correctness of Uncle
Billy Sherman's statement that "War is hell!"

Reaching Washington, the regiment bivouacked a single night, awaiting
transportation to Harrisburg. During this time discipline was relaxed
and the men were permitted to see the capital city. The
lieutenant-colonel and I enjoyed the extraordinary luxury of a good
bath, a square meal, and a civilized bed at the Metropolitan Hotel, the
first in five long months. Singular as it may seem, I caught a terrific
cold as the price I paid for it. The next day we were