ts men
remained on board another night. We hear we are to go right to the
field, where active operations are going on. This seems hard. We have
not till now given up the hope that we were not to go out into Virginia
with the rest of the men, but were to be kept here at Washington.
Fierce, indeed, are our trials. I am not discouraged entirely; but I am
weak from want of food which I can eat, and from sickness. I do not know
how I am going to live in such way, or get to the front.

P.S. We have just landed; and I had the liberty to buy a pie of a woman
hawking such things, that has strengthened me wonderfully.

CAMP NEAR CULPEPER. _25th._--My distress is too great for words; but I
must overcome my disinclination to write, or this record will remain
unfinished. So, with aching head and heart, I proceed.

Yesterday morning we were roused early for breakfast and for preparation
for starting. After marching out of the barracks, we were first taken to
the armory, where each man received a gun and its equipments and a piece
of tent. We stood in line, waiting for our turn with apprehensions of
coming trouble. Though we had felt free to keep with those among whom we
had been placed, we could not consent to carry a gun, even though we did
not intend to use it; and, from our previous experience, we knew it
would go harder with us, if we took the first step in the wrong
direction, though it might seem an unimportant one, and an easy and not
very wrong way to avoid difficulty. So we felt decided we must decline
receiving the guns. In the hurry and bustle of equipping a detachment
of soldiers, one attempting to explain a position and the grounds
therefor so peculiar as ours to junior, petty officers, possessing
liberally the characteristics of these: pride, vanity, conceit, and an
arbitrary spirit, impatience, profanity, and contempt for holy things,
must needs find the opportunity a very unfavourable one.

We succeeded in giving these young officers a slight idea of what we
were; and endeavoured to answer their questions of why we did not pay
our commutation, and avail ourselves of that provision made expressly
for such; of why we had come as far as that place, etc. We realized then
the unpleasant results of that practice, that had been employed with us
by the successive officers into whose hands we had fallen,--of shirking
any responsibility, and of passing us on to the next officer above.

A council was soon holden to decide wh