"You all recollect the Sibley," said a Lieutenant, "that stands in the rear of old Pigey"s marquee, in which he gave the collation after the last corps review, and welcomed our officers as he steadied himself at the table, with "Here comes my gallant 210th." The Court met in that."
"Yes," resumed Bill, "the same. It stands near his cook tent, and while his darkies were serving up French cookery, the Judge Advocate did the work allotted him in endeavoring to justify by the trial, in some slight manner, the General"s outrageous conduct. I heard that Tom said, that after the Judge Advocate had asked that he be vouched for, and the Colonel became indignant, the Judge Advocate said somewhat blandly,
""You must remember, Colonel, that this is not one of your ordinary Courts of Justice."
""That it is not a Court of Justice," retorted the Colonel, "is very apparent."
"Both were put through in a hurry, at any rate. The different members of the Court said that they all had marching orders, and they had no sooner left the Sibley than they were upon horseback and on the gallop towards their different commands. Our Doctor had detailed an ambulance to take the Colonels in the rear of the Division. Old Pigey, in his usual morning survey of the premises, saw it in front of the Sibley, and sent an Orderly to take the rather lively, good-looking bays that were in it and exchange them for the old rips that haul the ambulance his cooks ride in. But we did not move then, although they say we will certainly to-morrow."
That inevitable "they say," the common prefix to rumors in camp as well as civil life, had given Bill correct information. For next morning, in spite of the lowering sky, the camps were all astir with busy life, and during the course of the forenoon column after column trudged along over the already soft roads in a south-westerly direction. The movement was the mad desperation of a Commander of undaunted energy. A vain effort to appease that most capricious of masters, popular clamor. The rains descended, and that grand army of the Potomac literally floundered in the mud.
In an old field, thickly grown with young pines, very near the farthest point reached in the march, our Regiment rested towards the close of the last day of the advance, or to speak more truly, attempted advance.
Fatigued with the double duty of struggling with the mud and corduroying the roads, the repose was heartily welcome.
"It does a fellow good to feel a little frisky,"
sang, or rather shouted, a little Corporal, whom we have met before in these pages, as he made ridiculous efforts to infuse life into heels clodded with mud.
"Talk as you please about old Pigey, boys, he"s a regular trump on the whiskey question. He"ll cut red-tape any day on that. Don"t you see the boys?" continued the Corporal, addressing a crowd reposing at full length upon the freshly cut pine boughs, conspicuous among whom was the Adjutant;--pointing as he spoke to several men in uniform, but boys in years, who were being forced and dragged along by successive groups of their comrades.
"Couldn"t stand the Commissary--stomachs too tender. Ha! ha! Pigey and myself are in on that."
"What is up now, Corporal?" queried the Adjutant.
"Nothing is up; it"s all down," retorted the Corporal, in a half serious air, as he saluted the Colonel respectfully. "You see, Adjutant, they are bits of boys at any rate, just from school, and the Commissary was too much for their empty stomachs. I was sent back to hurry up the stragglers, and while we were catching up as rapidly as possible, old Pigey came ploughing up the mud alongside of us, followed by that sucker-mouthed Aid. I saw at once that Division Head-quarters had a good load on. With a patronizing grin, said the General stopping short alongside of a wagon belonging to another corps, and that was fast almost up to the wagon-bed, while the mules were fairly floating, "What"s in that wagon?" and without waiting for answer, "whiskey, by G--d," he broke out, snuffing at the same time towards the wagon. "Boys, unload a couple of barrels," he continued, good-humoredly, as if trying to make up for the outrage he has just committed upon the Regiment. The driver protested, and the wagon guards said that it could not be taken without an order; but it was after three, and old Pigey ripped and swore that his order was as good as anybody"s, and the guards were frightened enough to let our boys roll out two barrels. No pigeon-holing on a whiskey scent! One barrel he ordered up to his head-quarters, and the head of the other was knocked in, and he told us to drink our fill, and at it the boys went. Tin cups, canteens, cap-covers, anything that would hold the article, were made use of, and they are a blue old crowd, from the General down. The boys had had nothing but a few hard tack during the day, and it was about the first drink to some, and from the way it tastes it must have been made out of rotten corn and not two months old, and altogether straggling increased considerably."
"Straggling! why they are wallowing like hogs in the mud, Adjutant! It is a shame, and if some one of my superiors will not prefer charges against the General and his Adjutant, I will. Men of mine are drunk that I never knew to taste a drop before," indignantly exclaimed the Western Virginia Captain, as, with hat off, face aglow with perspiration, eyes flashing, and boots that indicated service in taking the soundings of the mud on the march, he came panting up with rapid strides. "Now, sir, fourteen of my best men are drunk--the first drunken man I have had during the campaign--and I"ll be shot to death with musketry, sooner than punish a single man of them."
"But discipline must be kept up," said the Adjutant.
"Discipline! do you say, Adjutant?" retorted the Captain. "If you want to see discipline go to Division Head-quarters. Why old Pigey is prancing around like a steed at a muster,--crazy! absolutely crazy! His c.o.c.ked hat is more crooked than ever, and the knot of his m.u.f.fler is at the back of his neck, and the ends flying like wings. Just a few minutes ago he stopped suddenly while on a canter, right by one of my men, lying along the road-side, that he had made drunk, and chuckled and laughed, and lolled from side to side in his saddle, and then at a canter again rode to another one and went through the same performance. And his Adjutant-General--why one of my men not ten minutes ago led his horse to Head-quarters. He was so drunk, actually, that his eyes looked like those of a shad out of water a day,--his feet out of the stirrups, the reins loose about his horse"s neck, his hands hanging listlessly down, and the liquor oozing out of the corners of his sucker mouth. And there he was, his horse carrying him about at random among the stumps, and officers and men laughing at him, expecting to see him go over on the one side or the other every moment. Now, it is a burning shame. And I, for one, will expose them, if it takes the hide off. Here are our Colonels confined just for no offence at all,--for doing their duty, in fact,--and this man, after having Court-martialed all that he could of his command, trying to demoralize the rest by whiskey. Now, sir, the higher the rank the more severe the punishment should be. Just before we started Burney had an order read that we were about to meet the enemy, and that every man must do his duty. And here is a General of Division, in command of nine thousand men, as drunk as a fool."
"Let Pigey alone on the whiskey question, Captain," interrupted the Corporal, who had in the meantime been refreshing his inner man by a pull at his canteen. "He"s a regular trump--yes," slapping his canteen as he spoke, "a full hand of trumps any time on that topic. Like other men, he drinks to drown his grief at our poor prospect of a fight."
"A fine condition he is in to lead men into a fight;--but not much worse than at Fredericksburg," slowly observed the Preacher Lieutenant, who, as one of the crowd, had been a listener to the story of the Captain.
"Drunkenness has cursed our army too much. But we cannot consistently be silent in sight of conduct like this on the part of Commanders. The interests of our men"----
"Have a care, Lieutenant," quietly observed the Adjutant, "how you talk.
"The interests of the men" have placed our Colonels under guard in the Sibley."
"Not bolts, nor bars a prison make," resumed the Preacher more spiritedly, "and I would sooner have a quiet conscience in confinement, than the reproach of disgraceful conduct and command a Division."
Corduroying the entire route had not been proposed, when the army commenced its movement; but it became apparent to all that progress was only tolerable with it, and without it, impossible. On the day after the above conversation, the army commenced to retrace its steps. Some days, however, intervened before the smoke ascended from their old huts, and the men in lazy circles about the camp fires rehashed their recollections of the "mud march."
Like our repulse at Fredericksburg, it was, as far as our Commander-in-Chief was concerned, a misfortune and not a fault. A change in command was evident, however, and the subst.i.tution of the whole-hearted, dashing Hooker for the equally earnest but more steady Burnside, that took place in the latter part of January, occasioned no surprise in the army. The new Commander went much farther, than old attachments had probably permitted his predecessor in going, in removing McClellanism. Grand Divisions were abolished; rigid inquiries into the comforts and conveniences of the men were frequent, and senseless reviews less frequent. Bakeries were established in every Brigade, and fresh bread and hot rolls furnished in wholesome abundance, to the great benefit of the Government, for hospital rolls were thereby depleted, and reports for duty increased. Rigid discipline and daily drills too were kept up, as "Old Joe" was a frequent visitor, when least expected. His constant solicitude for the welfare of the men, manifested by close personal attention, which the men themselves were witness to, rather than by concocted newspaper reports, by which the friends of the soldier in their loyal homes might be imposed upon, and the soldier himself not benefited, endeared him to his entire command.
One clear, cold morning, during these palmy days of the army, the men of the regiment nearest the Surgeon"s Quarters were greatly surprised by the sudden exit of a small-sized sheet iron stove from the tent occupied by the Surgeon and Chaplain, closely followed up by the little Dutch Doctor in his shirt sleeves, sputtering hurriedly--
"Tam schmoke pox!" and at every e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n bestowing a vigorous kick.
At a reasonably safe distance in his rear was the Chaplain, in half undress also, remonstrating as coolly as possible,--considering that the stove was his property. The Doctor did not refrain, however, until its badly battered fragments lay at intervals upon the ground.
"Efry morn, and efry morn, schmoke shust as the Tuyfel. I no need prepare for next world py that tam shmoke pox. Eh?" continued the Doctor, facing the Chaplain.
"Come, Doctor," said the Chaplain, soothingly, "we ought to get along better than this in our department."
"Shaplain"s department! Eh! By G--t! One Horse-Doctor and one Shaplain enough for a whole Division!"
The sudden appearance of Bill, the attendant upon the Colonels in the Sibley, at the Adjutant"s quarters, had the effect of transferring hither the crowd, who were enjoying what proved to be a final dissolution of partnership between the Chaplain and the Doctor.
"I know your errand, Bill," remarked the Adjutant, looking him full in the face. "An orderly has just handed me the General Order. But what is to become of the Lieutenant-Colonel?"
"You only have the order dismissing the Colonel, then. There was a message sent about ten o"clock last night, a little after the General Order was received at the Sibley, stating that at day-break this morning the Colonel should be escorted to Aquia under guard, and that before leaving he should have no intercourse whatever with any of his command.
Old Pigey also tried further to add insult to injury, by stating that the Lieutenant-Colonel, who cannot, from weakness, walk twenty steps, even though it would save his life, would be released from close confinement, and might have the benefit of Brigade limits in our new camp ground for exercise. You know that is so full of stumps and undergrowth that a well man can hardly get along in it."
"So an officer of the Colonel"s merit and services," remarked the Adjutant, "was dragged off before daylight, and disgraced for what was in its very worst light but a simple blunder, made under the most extenuating of circ.u.mstances. Boys, if there be faith in Stanton"s pledged word, matters will be set right as soon as the record of the case reaches the War Department. I am informed that he denounced the whole proceeding as an outrage, and telegraphed the General; and we all know that the General has been spending a good portion of the time since the trial in Washington."
"And he came back," observed Bill, "yesterday morning, in a mood unusual with him before three o"clock in the afternoon. He had his whole staff, all his orderlies and the Provost Guard out to stop a Maine Regiment from walking by the side of the road, when the mud was over shoe top in the road itself,--and he flourished that thin sword of his, and raved and swore and danced about until one of the Maine boys wanted to know who "that little old c.o.c.key was with a ramrod in his hand,--" and that set the laugh so much against him that his Aids returned their pistols and he his sword, and he sneaked back to his marquee, and issued an order requiring his whole command to stand at arms along the road side upon the approach of troops from either direction."
"Which," remarked the Adjutant, "if obeyed, would keep them under arms well nigh all the time, and would provoke a collision, as it would be an insult to the troops of other commands, to whom the road should be equally free. But it is a fair sample of the judgment of Pigey."
CHAPTER XIX.
_The Presentation Mania--The Western Virginia Captain in the War Department--Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton--Capture of the Dutch Doctor--A Genuine Newspaper Sell._
Presentations by men to officers should be prevented by positive orders; not that the recipients are not usually meritorious, but the practice by its prevalency is an unjust tax upon a cla.s.s little able to bear it. A costly sword must be presented to our Captain,--intimates a man perhaps warmly in the Captain"s confidence. Forthwith the list is started, and with extra guard and fatigue duty before the eyes of the men, it makes a unanimous circuit of the command. Active newspaper reporters, from the sheer merit of the officer, may be, and may be from the additional inducement of a little compensation, give an account of the presentation in one of the dailies that fills the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the officer"s friends with pride, while the decreased remittance of the private may keep back some creature comfort from his wife and little ones. Statistics showing how far these presentations are spontaneous offerings, and to what extent results of wire-working at Head-quarters, would prove more curious than creditable.
Our Brigade did not escape the Presentation Mania. Never did it develop itself in a command, however, more spontaneously. The plain, practical sense of our Brigadier was the more noticeable to the men, on account of its marked contrast to the quibbles and conceit of the General of Division. The officers and men of the Brigade had with great care and cost selected a n.o.ble horse of celebrated stock upon which to mount their Brigadier, and, on a pleasant evening in March, a crowd informally a.s.sembled was busied in arranging for the morrow the programme of presentation. The General of Division, so far in the cold in the matter, was just then making himself sensibly felt.
"Colonel," said an officer, who from the direction of Brigade Head-quarters neared the crowd, addressing a central figure, "you might as well take the General"s horse out to gra.s.s awhile."
"Explain yourself," say several.
"Pigey has his foot in the whole matter nicely. The General, you know, just returned this evening from sick leave. Well, he and his friends, who came with him to see the presentation ceremonies, had not been at Head-quarters an hour before that sucker-mouthed Aid made his appearance, and said that he was directed by the General Commanding the Division to place him under arrest. The fellow was drunk, and the General hardly deigned to notice him. As he staggered away, he muttered that there were fifteen charges against him, and that he would find the General"s grip a tight one."
Amid exclamations, indicating that the perplexity of the matter could not prevent a sly smile at the ludicrous position in which the Brigadier and his friends from abroad were placed, the officer continued--
"But the General brings good news from Washington. The Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel of the 210th return at an early day."