y obtained,
a great number being officers. At least twenty-five Lieutenants and
Captains had volunteered. The detachment was put under Captain Foster
as chief of the storming party, and the next day was occupied in
drilling the men and putting them in shape for the undertaking. We
were formed in line about dark near the time and place allotted, and
all were in high glee in anticipation of the novel assault. But just
as all were ready, orders came countermanding the first order. So
the officers and men returned to their quarters. Some appeared well
satisfied at the turn of events, especially those who had volunteered
more for the honor attached than the good to be performed. Others,
however, were disappointed. An old man from Laurens was indignant. He
said "the Third Regiment would never get anything. That he had been
naked and barefooted for two months, and when a chance was offered
to clothe and shoe himself some d----n fool had to countermand the
order." Ere many days his ambition and lust for a fight were filled to
overflowing.

The various grades and ranks of the Generals kept us continually
moving from left to right, Generals being sometimes like a balky
horse--will not pull out of his right place. We were stationed, as
it appeared from the preparations made, permanently just in front of
Richmond, or a little to the left of that place and the Williamsburg
road, and began to fortify in earnest. About the middle of June
Lee and his Lieutenants were planning that great campaign whereby
McClellan was to be overthrown and his army sent flying back to
Washington. Generals plan the moves of men like players their pieces
upon the chess board--a demonstration here, a feint there, now a great
battle, then a reconnoissance--without ever thinking of or considering
the lives lost, the orphans made, the disconsolate widows, and broken
homes that these moves make. They talk of attacks, of pressing or
crushing, of long marches, the streams or obstacles encountered, as if
it were only the movement of some vast machinery, where the slipping
of a cog or the breaking of a wheel will cause the machine to
stop. The General views in his mind his successes, his marches, his
strategy, without ever thinking of the dead men that will mark his
pathway, the victorious fields made glorious by the groans of the
dying, or the blackened corpses of the dead. The most Christian and
humane soldier, however, plans his battles without ever a thought o