.

There came to the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery, on May 17, 1864,
the summons which, after such long immunity, it had almost ceased to
expect.

The preceding two weeks had been among the most eventful of the war.
They had seen the crossing of the Rapidan by Grant on the 4th, and the
terrible battles for days following in the Wilderness and at
Spottsylvania, depleting the army by such enormous losses as even this
war had hardly seen before. Heavy reinforcements were demanded and
sent forward from all branches of the service; in the emergency this
artillery regiment was summoned to fight as infantry, and so served
until the end of the conflict, though for a long time with a hope,
which survived many disappointments, of being assigned to its proper
work with the heavy guns.

It started for the front on May 18th (1864), and on the 20th reached
the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, and was assigned to the
Second Brigade, First Division, of the Sixth Corps, now under
Major-General Horatio G. Wright, another leader of Connecticut origin,
who had succeeded to the command of the Corps on the death a few days
before of Litchfield County's most noted soldier, John Sedgwick.

[Illustration: General Sedgwick]

The famous series of movements "by the left flank" was in progress,
and the regiment was in active motion at once. For more than a week
following its arrival at the front it was on the march practically all
the time while Grant pushed southward. To troops unaccustomed to
anything more arduous than drilling in the Defences at Washington,
it was almost beyond the limits of endurance. At the start, without
experience in campaigning, the men had overburdened themselves with
impedimenta which it was very soon necessary to dispense with. "The
amount of personal effects then thrown away," wrote the chaplain, Rev.
Winthrop H. Phelps, "has been estimated by officers who witnessed and
have carefully calculated it, to be from twenty to thirty thousand
dollars. To this amount must be added the loss to the Government in
the rations and ammunition left on the way." On some of the marches
days were passed with scarcely anything to eat, and it is recorded
that raw corn was eagerly gathered, kernel by kernel, in empty
granaries, and eaten with a relish. Heat, dust, rain, mud, and a rate
of movement which taxed to the utmost the powers of the strongest,
gave to these untried troops a savage hint of the hardships of
c