of the next day. The plot was thickening, and the hostile
forces were moving cautiously, each watching the movements of the other,
and each ready to seize any opportunity for rushing upon its enemy to
destroy it. Thus far our marches had been of most fatiguing character.
We had, in the last four days, passed over one hundred miles of road. It
is to be remembered that these marches were made under burning suns, and
that each soldier carried with him his gun, knapsack, haversack,
containing five days' provisions, and forty rounds of cartridges. The
men had kept up wonderfully during this trying campaign, but the great
march of all, in which this magnificent corps was to outdo all that was
ever recorded of wonderful marches, was yet in store for it.

We waited at Manchester until evening. The inhabitants were well
supplied with rye whisky, and it must be confessed that soldiers have a
way of finding out the existence of that luxury, and of supplying
themselves with it; and as the men of the old Sixth corps were in no
respect behind their comrades of the other corps, many of our brave
fellows became, long before dark, considerably inebriated.

At nine o'clock in the evening of the 1st of July, we were on the road,
but it was eleven before we were fairly under headway. Those who during
the day had indulged so freely in the rye whisky of the farmers, as to
disable them from marching or even standing in line, were quietly thrown
into the clumps of bushes by the roadside, and left to be gathered up by
cavalry squads that were scouring the country for stragglers. Those that
were left by our own provost-guards were picked up by rebel scouts.

The column now pushed rapidly on; all night the weary march was kept up.
A halt of ten minutes for breakfast, and then on again. Now we heard
that a part of the army, the First corps, had already engaged the enemy
at Gettysburgh, with doubtful issue, and that its commander, General
Reynolds, was killed.

New ardor was now kindled in the breasts of the men of the Sixth corps
at these tidings, and they pressed forward at a pace unusual, even for
them. The day was bright, the sun pouring scalding rays from a cloudless
sky. The men strove hard to keep in the ranks, for few in that corps
were willing to be left behind in a fight.

Yet some gave out from exhaustion, but even these, at a slower pace,
followed the rapidly moving column.

At the houses on the roadsides, the citizens, their wive