Chapter 4: from civil to military life
- Off for Manassas -- first glimpse of an Army and a battle-field -- the Richmond Howitzers -- intellectual atmosphere of the camp -- essential spirit of the Southern volunteer.
The exact dates of the personal movements and experiences thus far narrated cannot be determined. This is largely due to a habit of destroying family letters, and this to a weak dread of opening them, or even of looking upon them, after the lapse of years. Up to this point the lack of such letters has signified little. It can make little difference just when I left New York for New Ha.ven, or when we left New Haven for Richmond, or Richmond for Manassas. This book is not intended to be a rigid record of the daily succession and the precise dates of camp and march and battle; and yet there is no gainsaying the almost inestimable value of letters to a book of reminiscence, furnishing contemporaneous record and comment so much more vivid and accurate than memory. In the absence of these I shall have to rest largely, for the elements of time and date, upon the relation of what I may record to the general movement of the campaigns, which will, for the most part, prove sufficient for my purpose. For example, I know that Beers' funeral was just after the battle of Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863; that we arrived in Richmond a short time before the battle of Bethel, June 10, 1861; that we left Richmond almost immediately after the battle of Manassas, July 21, 1861. It was not our fault that we did not leave earlier. My brother and I had volunteered in an infantry company called after a favorite corps which had left the city for the front, “Junior company F,” which was being drilled in awkward
