om
a wound and the loss of two nights' sleep at the batteries. Lieutenants
Beauregard, Stevens, and Tower, all wounded, were employed with the
divisions, and Lieutenants G. W. Smith and G. B. McClellan with the
company of sappers and miners. Those five lieutenants of engineers, like
their captain, won the admiration of all about them". (Ex. Doc. No. 1,
p. 385.)

Major John L. Smith, senior engineer, says: "Lieutenant Smith reports
all the sappers who were engaged on the 13th and 14th, to have conducted
themselves with intelligence and intrepidity altogether satisfactory;
but, he mentions the orderly sergeant, Hastings, who was wounded, as
being eminently distinguished, and he mentions also artificer Gerber, as
having been particularly distinguished". (Ex. Doc. No. 1, p. 430.)

Without dwelling upon details of the fighting in the streets and houses
on the 14th, it may be stated that, a short time before the recall was
sounded, when Orderly Sergeant Hastings fell, Lieutenant McClellan
seized the Sergeant's musket, fired at, and killed the man who shot
Hastings. In a few moments thereafter the company passed the dead body
of that "liberated", _convict_ Mexican.

The unoccupied private house in which we were quartered that night was
near the place at which the man, who shot Colonel Garland, had been left
tied to a lantern iron with a rope around his neck. When we returned the
man was gone. Nothing further was said or done upon our side, in his
_case_.

An hour or more after we were comfortably "settled in our new home", I
noticed that McClellan was very quiet for a considerable time,
evidently thinking of matters which deeply interested him. An occasional
marked change seemed to come over the spirit of his dream. Finally I
awakened him from his reverie, saying: "A penny for your thoughts. I
have been watching you for half an hour or more, and would like much to
know, honor bright, what you have been thinking about".

To which he replied: "I have been making a 'general review' of what we
have gone through since we left West Point, one year ago this month,
bound for the 'Halls of the Montezumas'; have been again on the Rio
Grande, that grave-yard of our forces; have gone over the road from
Matamoros to Victoria and Tampico, where we had so much hard work; went
through the siege of Vera Cruz, where we were left out in the cold
during the ceremonies of surrender, and later, had to make our way as
best we could, with the e