Emilio, Luis F., History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry , 1863-1865

[185] of battle and defeat, severe marches, midnight alarms, and long hours of picket in woody solitudes. But speculations as to where we were going were then uppermost in our minds. Were we to join the armies of the North with a prospect of military glory and its accompanying danger, or to be doomed to comparative inaction in the Department of the South, depleted of its troops? Musing thus, we ran past part of our sister regiment, the Fifty-fifth, at Yellow Bluff, continuing down the river to its junction with blue water. There the tide was found not to be serving; and our transport lay swinging and rolling lazily in unison with other craft, similarly detained, until the bar could be safely crossed and the open sea gained.

In the North great movements were preparing. Lieutenant-General Grant had been appointed to the chief command of the armies. A combined movement of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of the James against Richmond was determined upon, and General Gillmore was ordered to join the latter army with the divisions of Terry, Turner, and Ames, of the Tenth Corps, as rapidly as they could be transported. General Hatch was to take command of the Department of the South.

Aware of the impending stroke in Virginia and the withdrawal of our main force from Florida, by April 18 the enemy had sent away the larger part of his troops. General Beauregard had been relieved of the command on April 20 by Maj.-Gen. Samuel Jones, and departed for Weldon, N. C.