John D. Billings, The history of the Tenth Massachusetts battery of light artillery in the war of the rebellion

[32] friends who had succeeded in eluding the vigilance which would have denied them this last privilege. There were brave struggles made to appear calm, but the tears would come, and as the train moved away, the last view of a wife or mother to some, was a frantic gesture of the hand and streaming eyes that told how great the sacrifice to those who must stay at home and wait.

We arrived at Fall River about dark, and found the steamer ‘State of Maine’ in readiness to receive us. After unloading our one hundred and ten horses from the forward cars, in which they had been shipped at Boston, and getting them unwillingly aboard and safely stored on deck, we took possession of the ample accommodations of the boat and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit. There was little sleep to be had that night, and many of us, though ordered to remain below, spent much time on deck, enjoying the brilliant starlight and weird phosphorescence of the dark waters until morning broke, and the attractions of New York harbor, which we were then entering, charmed our gaze.

It has been remembered of this voyage, by some of the comrades, that we drank water from a large ice-tank, in which, some, who professed to know whereof they spoke, declared that deceased soldiers had been packed and brought from Fortress Monroe early in the war. It is so much easier, removed from the event by a lapse of seventeen years, to vouch for the truthfulness of this statement than to prove its falsity that we shall pass it by unquestioned, leaving each comrade of the Battery whose eye meets the above to supplement the statement for himself with any facts in his possession.

In passing up New York harbor we sailed near