ht way to do things at that time, that this error
occurred, and it was not until after the First Battle of Bull Run that it
was corrected.

On the sixth of June, 1861, the company was mustered into the United
States service by Colonel S. Loomis of the United States Army, for the
period of "three years unless sooner discharged," in a large room of a
building on Eddy street.

On the eighth of June, the regular business of soldier's life began by the
company going into camp on Dexter Training Ground. The time was occupied
in detachment and battery drills until the nineteenth of the month, when
the guns, carriages, and the horses also, if my memory serves me, were
embarked on the steamer Kill-von-Kull, at the Fox Point wharf. The steamer
landed at Elizabethport, New Jersey, where the battery and men were
transferred to cars. The train left Elizabethport about four o'clock in
the afternoon. The journey to Washington was a most tedious one.
Harrisburg was not reached until the next morning, and it was not until
the following morning that the train arrived in Washington.

Although the journey was a long one, and tiresome, many incidents
transpired to relieve the tedium of the trip. At Baltimore, which was
passed through in the evening, every man was on the _qui vive_, with
nerves strung to the tension, so great was the fear that an attack might
be made upon us. Every one who had a revolver carried it cocked. A
corporal, who is now a commissioned officer in the regular army, remarked
to me that he never was in such danger in his life, though nothing had
occurred to awaken a sense of danger, except that a small pebble was
thrown, probably by some boys, that hit one of the gun carriages on the
flat car, upon which he and I were riding. The next day rebel flags, in
imagination, were frequently discovered while passing through Maryland.

On our arrival at Washington, the morning of the twenty-second, we were
cordially greeted by Captain Tompkins of the three months battery, and he
and his men lent us every assistance in their power. The company went into
camp in Gale's woods, with the Second Regiment Rhode Island Infantry, and
adjoining were the camps of the three months organizations--the First
Regiment Rhode Island Detached Militia and the First Battery. The ground
occupied by the three months men was already known as "Camp Sprague;" the
ground occupied by the Second Battery and the Second Regiment was named
"Camp Clark," in h