ated
and thoroughly demoralized enemy.

General Pope's campaign in Northern Virginia, inaugurated with a great
flourish of trumpets, had resulted disastrously; the rebel army was
greatly encouraged by the inactivity and the vacillating conduct of
their opponents, and had commenced a vigorous aggressive movement. The
National capital was again in imminent peril, causing a feverish
excitement throughout the country; Baltimore and Cincinnati were
seriously threatened, and a great crisis was evidently at hand. Vigorous
measures must be adopted at once, or our boasted Republic would soon be
a thing of the past.

The President, in view of the great emergency, had ordered drafts,
amounting in the aggregate to six hundred thousand men, one-half thereof
for three years, and the other half for nine months, the latter to be
drawn from the enrolled militia; and the utmost activity everywhere
prevailed in connection with the raising, equipping and forwarding of
this vast army of recruits.

Rhode Island was thoroughly alive to the occasion, determined not to be
outdone by any of her sister States in meeting this new and pressing
demand upon her loyalty and her resources; and meeting it too, if
possible, without resort to a draft, which, of course, was obnoxious to
the sentiments of the people. In order to promote enlistments, the
stores in some places were closed at 3 P. M. each day; war
meetings were held every evening, and the greatest enthusiasm was
manifested. The whole State seemed to be one vast recruiting camp, and
all the people, both male and female, to be engaged in the business. For
it should ever be remembered, to the praise of the women of Rhode
Island, that they were fully as loyal and as devoted to our country's
cause during the rebellion, as were the men; and that in very many cases
they suffered and sacrificed quite as much at home, though in different
ways, as did their husbands and sons and brothers in the field.

In such a state of public feeling what could I, a young unmarried man,
do consistent with a fair amount of self-respect but enlist? Evidently
nothing; and so I left the teacher's desk and enlisted as a private in
Company C, Eleventh Rhode Island Volunteers, under Captain Charles W.
Thrasher. I was detailed for service in the quartermaster's department
under Lieutenant John L. Clark, and shortly after was transferred with
him (I never knew why) to the Twelfth, and was appointed by Colonel
Browne to th