previous next

[299]

I am in no hurry for a commission. I am willing to remain Orderly six months if the Colonel does not recognize me as possessing the material for an officer. . . . . If I have to wait for my commission till after a fight, I shall be quite as well satisfied.

He had been promised a lieutenancy in a New Jersey regiment, but he preferred not to leave his own; and he was at length rewarded, as appears from the following extract from a letter of Lieutenant-Colonel Underwood:—

I always thought your son did a noble thing when he preferred to go into the service at once in the ranks to waiting on the uncertainties of a commission which had been promised him some time. His conduct has been uniform with this start, and the other day he showed himself quite as high-minded in preferring to stay as a Sergeant in his own regiment to going elsewhere with a commission. I have once or twice called the Colonel's particular attention to him and recommended him. I am very happy to inform you that the Colonel has recommended him to the Governor as second lieutenant to fill the last vacancy, and by this time he is probably commissioned. I wish we had many more young men like him.

The commission soon arrived, and Arthur writes, ‘I am much gratified to receive a commission in this regiment, in which I have a pride and an interest.’ He was soon after detailed for duty in the provost guard, but disliked the easy and monotonous life, and was impatient to be again with his company and on the advance; and about the 10th of May he was relieved. Then followed a campaign which is pleasantly described in his letters.

Beauton Station, June 11, 1863.

dear——,—We marched all night the day we left, and the weather was showery. At about four A. M., we halted at Spotswood tavern and rested till ten; then a day's march brought us to this point, where we camped at six P. M., in a fine oak forest. We carried no tents, only blankets and haversacks. The next morning the men received six days rations additional, which were stowed away in their knapsacks. We rested all that day, as we had need of doing after marching forty miles in a trifle over twenty-four hours. At about five P. M., we received sudden orders to march, and made about four miles, when we bivouacked in a wood without fires. I was so thoroughly rested that I hardly slept at all. . . . . I enjoy


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
A. B. Underwood (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
June 11th, 1863 AD (1)
10 AD (1)
May 10th (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: