bunks. The Sixth corps
was encamped in a fine forest, which should have furnished not only
great abundance of timber for use about the quarters, but for fuel for
the winter; but owing to the wasteful manner in which the wood was at
first used in building log fires in the open air, the forest melted away
before the men had fairly concluded that there was any necessity for
using it economically.

Preparations were hurried forward for another advance. The railroad,
which had been destroyed by the rebels at the time of the raid to
Centreville, from the Rappahannock to Bristoe Station, was to be
rebuilt, and the bridge across the Rappahannock, which we had ourselves
destroyed, was to be replaced, before the army could safely undertake
another advance. It is one of the mysteries which people who have never
been connected with a great army have greatest difficulty in
comprehending, that an army advancing into such a country as we were now
threatening, must have ample and easy communications with its base of
supplies. Could such people for a moment realize the vast amount of
material consumed by such an army as ours, the mystery might be solved.
To attempt to advance into a desert country without first either
providing a supply for many days, or opening ready communications with
our base of supplies, would have been suicidal. General Sherman might
lead his army through a fertile country, where the ravages of war had
not appeared, and, by sweeping across a territory forty miles wide,
collect abundant supplies for his men; but our army was now to march
into a wilderness where even a regiment could not find subsistence. The
newspapers at the north that condemned the delay at Brandy Station, and
sneered at the idea that the army needed a base of supplies, simply
exhibited their profound ignorance of the first principles of
campaigning.

By the 25th the road was completed as far as Brandy Station, the bridge
rebuilt, and a large amount of supplies brought up; and the army was
ordered to move at an early hour on the 26th.

The hour for moving was assigned each corps, and the order in which it
was to march, that no delay or confusion might occur. The Third corps
was to start as soon as daylight, and the Sixth was to follow it.

Our Sixth corps was moving at sunrise, the hour designated, toward
Brandy Station. Presently the head of the column halted in the midst of
the camps of the Third corps, which were yet undisturbed. According