IV
HAVE been expecting all this week that I would have an opportunity to run up home today, but have just learned that Gen. Stark has issued orders that no man is to leave camp till the regiment is uniformed, which he expects will be next Monday or Tuesday. There is a rumor circulating that this regiment will not be ordered into active service unless we enlist for three years or until the war is ended; but Fred. Smith told me, yesterday, he would warrant we should be ordered off within ten days. If we are not, I think nearly all the boys will enlist for the war. We started out to see the rebels put down, and we are not willing to go home without seeing it done and having a hand in it. I do not think the war will last more than a few months.
Since our little affair with the Commissary we have had first rate grub. [This refers to the “rag hash war,” when the Abbott Guard rebelled against the rations and marched over to the city, in a body, for something to eat.] We were placed under arrest when we got back and kept under guard twenty-four hours. I gave a pretty plain statement of the affair in my letter to the American, and yesterday down came Fred. Smith to see about it. With one of the Governor’s Aides he went around and investigated pretty thoroughly, and there are already signs of a decided improvement.