nt, it may be well to hesitate; yet it will doubtless be
the verdict of history, that the hesitancy of General Meade at this time
was his great mistake.

A hard march on the 15th brought the Sixth corps to Boonsboro, where our
Second division encamped on precisely the same ground that we had
occupied on the 31st of October last. Neill's brigade made the march at
a breakneck pace, leaving the Vermonters far to the rear, who declared
that the recent associations of the former with the cavalry had
transformed them into a flying brigade. While resting here, a large body
of rebel prisoners was marched past. They were mostly those who had been
captured by Kilpatrick's men at Falling Waters. The rebels were hungry
and destitute of rations. Our men at once divided their rations of hard
bread and coffee with them, who, officers and all, declared that it was
the best meal they had enjoyed for several days, and expressed
themselves greatly pleased with the generosity of their guardians.

Notwithstanding our glorious success at Gettysburgh, and the good news
from the west, we were now hearing news that made our hearts sick, and
caused the cheeks of the New York soldiers to burn for the disgrace of
their native State. It was a source of the deepest mortification to the
brave New Yorkers, to feel that their own State and the great metropolis
had been outraged by the most disgraceful riot that had ever stained the
annals of any State or city in the Union, all for the purpose of
overawing the government in its efforts to subdue the rebellion. Our
companions from other States, with the generosity that characterizes
soldiers, never derided us with this disgrace, but alluded to the riot
as an uprising of foreigners, who had for the moment overpowered the
native element. Even the fact that the governor of that great State had,
in the midst of these terrible scenes, addressed the miscreants as his
"friends," was alluded to with a delicacy that won our hearts.

It was one of the pleasant indications of a union of hearts as well as
of States, that the soldiers of our sister States looked upon these
riots in the light of a general calamity, rather than a disgrace to a
particular State.

Crossing the South Mountain range, from Boonsboro to Middletown, the
Sixth corps reached Petersville, three or four miles north of Berlin,
where the army was to cross the Potomac. Here, nearly the whole army was
crowded into a space of not more than three mi