alma, which occurred on the
8th and 9th of May, and, in common with everybody else, felt
intensely excited. That I should be on recruiting service, when my
comrades were actually fighting, was intolerable, and I hurried
on to my post, Pittsburg. At that time the railroad did not
extend west of the Alleghanies, and all journeys were made by
stage-coaches. In this instance I traveled from Zanesville to
Wheeling, thence to Washington (Pennsylvania), and thence to
Pittsburg by stage-coach. On reaching Pittsburg I found many
private letters; one from Ord, then a first-lieutenant in Company
F, Third Artillery, at Fort McHenry, Baltimore, saying that his
company had just received orders for California, and asking me to
apply for it. Without committing myself to that project, I wrote
to the Adjutant-General, R. Jones, at Washington, D. C., asking him
to consider me as an applicant for any active service, and saying
that I would willingly forego the recruiting detail, which I well
knew plenty of others would jump at. Impatient to approach the
scene of active operations, without authority (and I suppose
wrongfully), I left my corporal in charge of the rendezvous, and
took all the recruits I had made, about twenty-five, in a steamboat
to Cincinnati, and turned them over to Major N. C. McCrea,
commanding at Newport Barracks. I then reported in Cincinnati, to
the superintendent of the Western recruiting service, Colonel
Fanning, an old officer with one arm, who inquired by what
authority I had come away from my post. I argued that I took it
for granted he wanted all the recruits he could get to forward to
the army at Brownsville, Texas; and did not know but that he might
want me to go along. Instead of appreciating my volunteer zeal, he
cursed and swore at me for leaving my post without orders, and told
me to go back to Pittsburg. I then asked for an order that would
entitle me to transportation back, which at first he emphatically
refused, but at last he gave the order, and I returned to
Pittsburg, all the way by stage, stopping again at Lancaster, where
I attended the wedding of my schoolmate Mike Effinger, and also
visited my sub-rendezvous at Zanesville. R. S. Ewell, of my class,
arrived to open a cavalry rendezvous, but, finding my depot there,
he went on to Columbus, Ohio. Tom Jordan afterward was ordered
to Zanesville, to take charge of that rendezvous, under
the general War Department orders increasing the numbe