ers and
soldiers, he had a hold on their affections such as no other commander
ever had, or could have. The men who were cursing him one day for the
almost intolerable rigors of his discipline, would in twenty-four
hours be throwing up their caps for him, or subscribing to buy him a
new horse, or petitioning the Governor not to let him be jumped. The
man who sat on a sharp-backed wooden horse in front of the guard
house, would sometimes watch the motions of the Colonel on drill or
parade, until he forgot the pain and disgrace of his punishment in
admiration of the man who inflicted it."

It is not hard to understand the hold he gained, through a personality
so striking and forceful, upon the men of his command; they were but
boys for the most part, in point of fact, and open to the influence of
just such strength, and perhaps also just such weaknesses, as they saw
in this splendidly virile and genuine, and very human character.

Colonel Kellogg was a Litchfield County man, a native of New Hartford,
and at this time about thirty-eight years of age. His education was
not of the schools, but gained from years of adventurous life as
sailor, gold-hunter, and wanderer. Shortly before the war he had
settled in his native state, but he responded to the call for the
national defence among the very first, and before the organization of
the Nineteenth had served as Major of the First Connecticut
Artillery. He lies buried in Winsted.

[Illustration: Fort Ellsworth, near Alexandria, May, 1863]

* * * * *

For more than a year and a half the regiment was numbered among the
defenders of the capital, removing after a few months from the
immediate neighborhood of Alexandria, and being stationed among the
different forts and redoubts which formed the line of defence south of
the Potomac.

Important as its service there was, and novel as it must have been to
Litchfield County boys, it was not marked by incidents of any note,
and furnished nothing to attract attention among the general and
absorbing operations of the war. It was, still, of vast interest to
the people of the home towns. The county newspapers had many letters
to print in those days from the soldiers themselves, and from visitors
from home, who in no inconsiderable numbers were journeying down to
look in upon them constantly. There were of course matters of various
nature which gave rise to complaints of different degrees of
seriousness;