at first reached positions which imposed
greater toil, or because greater confidence was reposed in them. Our own
division was one of those upon which the duties imposed were too great
for men to perform; yet the men would have resented being sent to the
rear, and it was said that General Smith remarked that "he had spoken
for a front seat for his boys and he intended to keep it."

Added to all the exposures and hardships of the siege, there was a
deplorable want of proper commissary and medical supplies. While the men
were supplied with fair rations of hard bread, vegetables were unknown
among us, and the supply of fresh meat wholly inadequate. In the Medical
Department the greatest difficulty was experienced in obtaining
supplies, and indeed it was impossible to get them. Not that regimental
surgeons did not use their utmost endeavor to procure them, but as
brigade and regimental commissaries could not obtain supplies of food
which were not furnished to the army at all, so surgeons could not
procure medicines and other necessaries which were locked in the
storehouses in Washington. This subject will be more fully alluded to in
another place, and it is to be hoped that the responsibility of this
criminal negligence to supply the army with medical and hospital stores
may fall where it belongs.

Thus, with their minds wrought up to a continual state of excitement,
with constant exposure to tempests and malaria, with excessive and
exhausting labors, and with improper food and scarcity of medicine,
sickness and death swept over us like a pestilence.

At length, after a month of toil and exposure almost unprecedented,
after losing nearly one-fifth of our magnificent army by disease and
death, our batteries were finished, the enormous siege guns were
mounted, and the thirteen inch mortars in position. The army looked
anxiously for the grand _finale_ of all these extensive preparations.
Men had lost the enthusiasm which prevailed when we landed upon the
Peninsula, and a smile was seldom seen; but a fixed and determined
purpose to succeed still appeared in their faces. Now at length we were
ready; and the countenances of the soldiers began to lighten up a
little. But as the sun rose on the morning of the 4th of May, behold,
the rebels had vanished, and with them our hopes of a brilliant victory!
Unfortunately for our hopes of a great success at Yorktown, the rebel
generals had shown themselves unwilling to afford us such an