of mingled exultation,--and mortification. Exultation,
of course, over the "glorious victory," but mortification in regard to
its effects and consequences on our future military career. We all
thought, from the officers down, that now the war would end, that we
would see no actual service, and never fire a shot. That we would be
discharged, and go home just little "trundle-bed soldiers," and have to
sit around and hear other sure-enough warriors tell the stories of
actual war and fighting. If we only had known, we were borrowing
unnecessary trouble,--as we found out later.

CHAPTER II.

BENTON BARRACKS. ST. LOUIS, MARCH, 1862.

Sometime during the last of February, the welcome news was given out
from regimental headquarters that we were soon to leave Camp
Carrollton. Our first objective point was to be St. Louis, Mo., and
what next nobody knew. Definite orders for the movement were issued
later, and it then occurred to us that possibly all our recent
apprehensions about not seeing any fighting were somewhat premature.

Right here I will say that in the brief sketch of the regiment
published in the reports of the Adjutant-General of the State of
Illinois, the date of our leaving Carrollton is given as February 21,
which is wrong. That date is either a mistake of the person who wrote
that part of the sketch, or a typographical error. I have in my
possession, and now lying before me, a letter I wrote to my father from
Benton Barracks, of date March 2, 1862, in which the date of our
arrival at St. Louis is given as February 28th. And I well know that we
were only two days on the trip. And besides the date given in my
letter, I distinctly remember several unwritten facts and circumstances
that satisfy me beyond any doubt, that the day we left Carrollton was
February 27, 1862. Early in the morning of that day, the regiment filed
out at the big gate, and marched south on the dirt road. Good-bye to
old Camp Carrollton! Many of the boys never saw it again, and I never
have seen it since but once, which was in the summer of 1894. I was
back then in Jersey county, on a sort of a visit, and was taken with a
desire to run up to Carrollton and look at the old camp. There was then
a railroad constructed during the last years of the war, (or about that
time), running south from the town, and less than an hour's ride from
Jerseyville, where I was stopping, so I got on a morning train, and,
like Jonah when moved to go to Tars