9 6

WAR PREPARATIONS IN THE NORTH.

the first enlistment for ninety days, and it was my fate to take the field withnew regiments, only one of which had been in my brigade in camp. AfterGeneral Bates’s arrival my own lmt was built on the slope of the hillsidebehind my brigade, close under the wooded ridge, and here for the next sixweeks was my home. The morning brought its hour of business correspond-ence relating to the command; then came the drill, when the parade groundwas full of marching companies and squads. Officers’ drill followed, withsword exercise and pistol practice, and the evening was allotted to schools oftheoretic tactics, outpost duty, and the like.

The first fortnight in camp was the hardest for the troops. The plowedfields became deep with mud which nothing could remove till steady goodweather should allow them to be packed hard under the continued tramp ofthousands of men. The organization of camp-kitchens had to be learned bythe hardest experience also, and the men who had some aptitude for cook-ing had to be found by a slow process of natural selection, during whichmany an unpalatable meal had to be eaten. A disagreeable bit of informa-tion soon came to us in the proof that more than half the men had never hadthe contagious diseases of infancy. The measles broke out, and we had toorganize a camp-hospital at once. A large barn near by was taken for thispurpose, and the surgeons had their hands full of cases, which, however triv-ial they might seem at home, were here aggravated into dangerous illness bythe unwonted surroundings, and the impossibility of securing the needed pro-tection from exposure. The good women of Cincinnati took promptly inhand the task of providing nurses for the sick and proper diet and delicaciesfor hospital use. The Sisters of Charity, under the lead of Sister Anthony, anoble woman, came out in force, and their black and white robes harmonizedpicturesquely with the military surroundings, as they flitted about under therough timber framing of the old barn, carrying comfort and hope from onerude couch to another.

As to supplies, hardly a man in a regiment knew how to make out a requi-sition for rations or for clothing, and, easy as it is to rail at “ red-tape,” thenecessity of keeping a check upon embezzlement and wastefulness justifiedthe staff-bureaus at Washington in insisting upon regular vouchers to supportthe quartermasters’ and commissaries’ accounts. But here, too, men weregradually found who had special talent for the work. Where everybody hadto learn a new business, it would have been miraculous if grave errors had notfrequently occurred. Looking back at it, the wonder is that the blunders andmishaps had not been tenfold more numerous than they were.

By the middle of May the confusion had given way to reasonable system,but we now were obliged to meet the embarrassments of reorganization for threeyears, under the President’s second call for troops (May 3d). In every companysome discontented spirits wanted to go home, and, to avoid the odium ofgoing alone, they became mischief-makers, seeking to prevent the whole com-pany from reenlisting. The growing discipline was relaxed or lost in the solici-tations, the electioneering, the speech-making, and the other common arts ofpersuasion. In spite of all these discouragements, however, the daily drills