ir heads or a
decent place for the soles of their feet. Their joy at being taken
aboard the steamer at dark, was as though they had been rescued from
shipwreck.

The camp at Charleston was in a quiet, level place, two miles up the
north side of the Kanawa River.

The monotony of the stay was somewhat relieved by the generosity of a
gentleman who presented Co. C with a library of valuable books that had
been damaged by the flood a few days previous. When the regiment moved
for the East, a large box of these books, under disguise, accompanied
it, which any officer of the commissary department was at liberty to
suppose filled with cooking utensils.

[Sidenote: Ned.]

When Gen. Wise scoured the Kanawa Valley for men, he took with him
Edward Morrison, a useful well-trained servant belonging to a gentleman
of the city of Charleston. Ned, being of a different school of politics
from the General, did not fancy the service, and, when in the midst of
the Alleghany mountains, he made his escape. He arrived at last, at
Charleston, and supposing the Emancipation Proclamation would soon be
issued, he begged the protection of Col. Tyler. The Colonel thought he
would risk the principles of Co. C, and accordingly, turned him over to
them contraband, for secretion. After lying in their quarters two weeks,
he was hired to act as their cook, which business he gladly entered. He
faithfully served them more than a year, after which he came to Oberlin
to be educated. But an attachment which has more than once turned a
student from his interest, allured him to the vicinity of Gallipolis,
Ohio, where he immediately wrote to Lieutenant Lincoln that he was to be
married in ten days.

In the latter part of October, Gen. Floyd had established himself on
Cotton Hill, thus being enabled to shell the camp of the Union Army at
Gauley Bridge, and to threaten its communications. Gen. Benham was
ordered to march around to the rear to induce him to desist from so rash
operations. Two or three regiments hesitated to perform the dangerous
movement. Finally he said, "Give me the Seventh and the Tenth Ohio and I
can drive the rebels to" ----, a place beyond the confines of this lower
world. This circumstance healed the old wound in the Tenth, which had
been made at Camp Dennison when the Seventh was called out to suppress a
riot among them.

On the 4th of November the Seventh set sail for Loop Creek, seven miles
below Gauley Bridge. It marched up the