RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRIVATE.—III. BY WARREN LEE GOSS.
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T was with open-eyed wonder that, aspart of McClellan’s army, we arrived atOld Point Comfort and gazed upon FortMonroe, huge and frowning. Negroeswere everywhere, and went about theirwork with an air of importance born oftheir new-found freedom. These werethe “ contrabands ” for whom General
Butler had recently invented that sobri-
quet. We pitched our tents amid thecharred and blackened ruins of what
had been the beautiful and aristocratic village of Hampton. The first thingI noticed about the ruins, unaccustomed as I was to Southern architecture,was the absence of cellars. The only building left standing of all the villagewas the massive old Episcopal church . Here Washington had worshiped, andits broad aisles had echoed to the footsteps of armed men during the Revolu-tion. In the church-yard the tombs had beeu broken open. Many tombstoneswere broken and overthrown, and at the corner of the church a big holeshowed that some one with a greater desire for possessing curiosities thanreverence for ancient landmarks had been digging for the corner-stone andits buried mementos.
Along the shore which looks toward Fort Monroe were landed artillery,baggage-wagons, pontoon trains and boats, and the level land back of this wascrowded with the tents of the soldiers. Here and there were groups fryinghard-tack and bacon. Near at hand was the irrepressible army mule, hitchedto and eating out of pontoon boats ; those who had eaten their ration of grainand hay were trying their teeth, with promise of success, in eating the boats.Au army mule was hungrier than a soldier, and would eat anything, especiallya pontoon boat or rubber blanket. The scene was a busy one. The red cap,white leggins, and baggy trousers of the Zouaves mingled with the blue uni-forms and dark trimmings of the regular infantry-men, the short jackets andyellow trimmings of the cavalry, the red stripes of the artillery, and the darkblue with orange trimmings of the engineers; together with the ragged, many-colored costumes of the black laborers and teamsters, all busy at something.
One morning we broke camp and went marching up the Peninsula. Theroads were very poor and muddy with recent rains, and were crowded withthe indescribable material of the vast army which was slowly creeping throughthe mud over the flat, wooded country. It was a bright day in April — a per-fect Virginia day; the grass was green beneath our feet, the buds of thetrees were just unrolling into leaves under the warming sun of spring, andin the woods the birds were singing. The march was at first orderly, but
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