conquerors, to take possession of
the city, they cravenly submitting to the yoke. Fort Washington, which
we were sent to garrison, situated on what is known as Bridgeport
Heights, we found in an unfinished state. In the half-dug trenches
were--whom, think'st, reader? Thousands of the adult men of Harrisburg,
with the rough implements of work in their hands, patriotically toiling
to put into a condition of defence this the citadel of their capital?
Nothing of the sort. Panic-stricken by the reported approach of the
enemy, the poltroons of the city had closed their houses and stores,
offered their stocks of merchandize for sale at ruinous prices, and
were thinking of nothing in their abject fear except how to escape with
their worthless lives and their property. In vain their patriotic
Governor, and the Commander of the Department of the Susquehanna--his
military head-quarters established there--sought to rally them to the
defence of their capital. Hired laboring men were all we saw in the
trenches! What a contrast to this the conduct of the Pittsburghers
presents! They too had a city to defend--the city of their homes. The
enemy threatened it, and they meant to defend it. Their shops were
closed; their furnace and foundry fires, which like those watched by
the Vestals had been burning from time immemorial, were put out; and
the people poured from the city and covered the neighboring hills,
armed with pick and shovel. "Fourteen thousand at work to-day on the
defences," says the Pittsburg _Gazette_ of the 18th June. Such a people
stood in no need of bayonets from a neighboring State to protect them;
while the apathy of the Harrisburgers only invited the inroads of an
enterprising enemy.

And so the Twenty-Third was ordered into the trenches! This was so
novel an experience to the men that they took to it pleasantly, and for
two days did their work with a will. It must have been amusing,
however, to an on-looker of muscle, in whose hands the pick or spade is
a toy, to watch with what a brave vigor hands unused to toil seized and
wielded the implements of the earth-heaver; and how after a dozen or
two of strokes and the sweat began to drop, the blows of the pick grew
daintier, and the spadefuls tossed aloft gradually and not slowly
became spoonfuls rather. But we rallied one another and dashed the
sweat away; and again the picks clove the stony masses damagingly, and
the shovels rang, and the parapets grew with visible growt