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and saying shortly: “No, sir, I am ready.”
Presently: “Colonel Lyman, take two or three orderlies and go to General Warren and report to me by telegraph promptly and frequently.”
I did not admire this duty, as there was to be an assault; but everybody must do his share, and I started immediately.
The General started with me. “Do you know the way to General Hancock's?”
“Yes, sir!”
In a few moments: “This is not the short cut to Hancock's.”
“I did not say I knew the short cut, General.”
“Well, but I wanted the short cut!
What's the use of the road; of course I knew the road!”
Whereupon I suggested I would gallop ahead, not to lose time; which I did and left my chief to attack Biddle, who was late and was coming up very red in the face!
It was half-past 4 when I got to Headquarters of the 5th Corps, which consisted of a couple of tents, pitched by a solitary tree.
Warren, with all his clothes on, was catching a little sleep on a camp bed. Burnside1 was there also, sitting under the tree, and there was a telegraph operator with his little portable instrument.
Our lines were advancing, and there was an inexplicable silence along the skirmish line. . . . At 6.50 came an order for all the line to advance and to attack the enemy if found. . . . A little later, after seven, Major Roebling came in and reported he
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1 “Everyone was near the breaking-point. He, Burnside, complained of the heavy artillery detailed to his corps. ‘They are worthless,’ said he; ‘they didn't enlist to fight and it is unreasonable to expect it from them. In the attack last night I couldn't find thirty of them!’ He afterwards said of Meade (to one of his Staff): ‘He is irascible; but he is a magnanimous man.’ Presently up comes Griffin, in one of his peculiar blusters! and all about a commissary who, he maintains, didn't follow orders. Griffin stormed and swore. ‘Now! now!’ said Warren (who can be very judicious when he chooses), ‘let us all try to keep our tempers more, and not swear so much. I know I give way myself; but it is unworthy.’ ” --Lyman's Journal.
Atlantic Monthly. Press. 1922.
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