at to do with us. One proposed to
place us under arrest, a sentiment we rather hoped might prevail, as it
might prevent our being sent on to the front; but another, in some spite
and impatience, insisted, as it was their duty to supply a gun to every
man and forward him, that the guns should be put upon us, and we be made
to carry them. Accordingly the equipment was buckled about us, and the
straps of the guns being loosened, they were thrust over our heads and
hung upon our shoulders. In this way we were urged forward through the
streets of Alexandria; and, having been put upon a long train of dirt
cars, were started for Culpeper. We came over a long stretch of
desolated and deserted country, through battlefields of previous
summers, and through many camps now lively with the work of this present
campaign. Seeing, for the first time, a country made dreary by the
war-blight, a country once adorned with groves and green pastures and
meadows and fields of waving grain, and happy with a thousand homes, now
laid with the ground, one realizes as he can in no other way something
of the ruin that lies in the trail of a war. But upon these fields of
Virginia, once so fair, there rests a two-fold blight, first that of
slavery, now that of war. When one contrasts the face of this country
with the smiling hillsides and vales of New England, he sees stamped
upon it in characters so marked, none but a blind man can fail to read,
the great irrefutable arguments against slavery and against war, too;
and must be filled with loathing for these twin relics of barbarism, so
awful in the potency of their consequences that they can change even the
face of the country.

Through the heat of this long ride, we felt our total lack of water and
the meagreness of our supply of food. Our thirst became so oppressive
as we were marched here from Culpeper, some four miles with scarcely a
halt to rest, under our heavy loads, and through the heat and deep dust
of the road, that we drank water and dipped in the brooks we passed,
though it was discoloured with the soap the soldiers had used in
washing. The guns interfered with our walking, and, slipping down,
dragged with painful weight upon our shoulders. Poor P.D. fell out from
exhaustion and did not come in till we had been some little time at the
camp. We were taken to the 4th Vermont regiment and soon apportioned to
companies. Though we waited upon the officer commanding the company in
which we were