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[55]

I never had any taste for army life, and what I have seen since I enlisted has increased my dislike. I am not sorry that I enlisted when I did; but when my term of enlistment expires, I think I will leave the army.

But on reflection, the great object of the war, the downfall of oppression, and the vindication of the rights of man, furnished him a reply to the questions which weighed upon his mind. Though he was partially discouraged, the great work to be accomplished rose up before his mind in all its grandeur, and banished the feeling of despondency. At Donelson and Murfreesborough he had aided in the grand result. Through extreme toil and dangers innumerable, he had passed many months in the field for the suppression of guerillas. He had witnessed the triumph of our great commander at Vicksburg, a result he had constantly predicted, and he had seen him invested with the supreme command. He had read the Proclamation of the President, giving liberty to the slaves. Accordingly, at the close of his term of service, he re-enlisted in the ranks, with his brother and the majority of his company, for the great, and, as he believed, the final campaign of the war.

After his re-enlistment, at his last visit to his home on furlough, when a friend earnestly remonstrated with him on his indifference to promotion, representing that the country needed the exercise of his higher, rarer talents, which qualified him for any position in the corps of engineers, his reply was, ‘The country needs men, not officers; and though as an officer I should associate with men of a higher rank, they would not be men of higher integrity and virtue.’ He obeyed his convictions, and gave to his country a man. He again shared in the danger, toil, and privation of his old company, of whom one who knew them well writes, ‘There was not an evil man among them.’

For a few weeks after his enlistment his regiment remained in camp at Davenport, Iowa. But this gave him no assurance of inactivity in the approaching campaign. He had studied well the situation and the men who were to make the great moves in the eventful game.

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