William Schouler, A history of Massachusetts in the Civil War: Volume 1

[601] He still had in his pocket a valuable gold watch. He said they were his master's, and he had taken possession of them on leaving Petersburg. He said he thought he was ‘pretty smart.’

On going back to headquarters, the entire staff rode with the General, who was pleased to point out many interesting localities. We went back by a different and more circuitous route, visited Fort Harrison, and the immense line of works of which it forms an important part. We passed long lines of wagons and ambulances. Arrived at headquarters at two o'clock, having rode about twenty miles. I had been within four miles of Richmond. Dined with the General, and spent most of the afternoon with him. He is enthusiastic in his praise of colored troops, and is trying to have in his command a corps composed entirely of them. He said the slave negroes make the best soldiers. The evening I passed pleasantly around the camp-fire with the officers, and Mr. Merriam, the correspondent of the New-York Herald.

Oct. 29.—After breakfasting with the General, and hearing him examine a secesh widow, who owned a large farm in the vicinity, and who asked to be furnished rations during the winter, although she has a son in the rebel army, I bade good-by to him and his officers, and, taking my place in an ambulance, departed for Bermuda Hundred, where Colonel Dodge, provost-marshal of the Army of the James, put the steamer Reindeer at my disposal, to take me to City Point, where I arrived about two o'clock. I immediately called at General Grant's headquarters, but he had not returned from the front. His adjutant-general, however, furnished me with a pass to any part of the Potomac Army. He also telegraphed to General Meade's headquarters to have an ambulance at the station for my use.

There are few Massachusetts regiments or batteries in the Army of the James. Major Stevens's battalion of the Fourth Regiment Massachusetts Cavalry was all I saw. I had the pleasure of meeting him, and I gave him blank rolls to fill up and forward to Boston.

At three o'clock, I left City Point in the cars for the front, intending to spend the night with a friend and relative, Colonel Charles S. Russell, Eleventh United-States Infantry, commanding the Twenty-eighth United-States Colored Regiment, in the Ninth Corps. The railroad runs the entire length of our lines, and the camps of the different corps are on each side of it. Twelve miles from City Point is General Meade's station. His headquarters are nearly a mile from there. I found the ambulance waiting for me. We drove to General Meade's quarters, and found Brigadier-General Williams, his chiefof-staff, and also Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Lyman, a volunteer aid,