XXIV
COMPANY I goes on guard today, and I can manage to pick out a little time for writing letters. I wish you could be in camp here Sundays and see the colored people come in. Sunday is the negro’s holiday, and they swarm into camp with their apples, peaches, chickens, or whatever they happen to have that can be turned into money or old clothes. Each one has a basket, with a crooked stick on which to swing it over the shoulder. These plantation negroes—mostly slaves—are a quaint lot, not a bit like the bright colored people you see north. We used to think the stage negro at the minstrel show was a burlesque. He wasn’t.
Fast Day some four hundred of the regiment marched down to the camp of the Third and had a jolly time. Roger had got along, but I saw him for only a moment. Frank Morrill and I took a most cheerful stroll down to that most cheerful public institution, the Congressional Cemetery, and saw the tombs of Gen. Macomb, Gov. Clinton, and no end of generals, commodores and other big men.
The Fourth N. H. Regiment passed here today. I do not know where they will camp. I have many acquaintances in its ranks.
Have you read about the taking of Munson’s Hill? Wasn’t that a pretty neat trick the rebels turned on us—mounting stovepipes and wooden cannons on the forts? The boys are borrowing trouble now through fears that McClellan will not take us with him when he advances over into Virginia. It would be decidedly ungrateful not to give us a chance to square accounts for Bull Run and the run we made after it. I shall never forgive the rebels for that affair until we have paid them in their own coin.
The First Michigan Regiment came in today and camped right beside us. They were at Bull Run as a three months’ regiment, and enlisted again, for three years, when their time was up.
The fort we have been working on is about ready for business. It mounts thirteen 32-pounder guns, and would be a lovely thing for a few thousand men to butt their heads against.
The days are very hot and the nights terribly cold. I put my overcoat on and wrap my blanket about my legs and feet when I bunk down nights, and then I am almost frozen. This is a good time to catch the fever and ague, and I may be in for it.