Cowhide Moccasins.
From the camp at
Winchester we moved to Culpeper Courthouse.
The troops were without shoes at this place, and
General Armistead
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detailed men to make moccasins out of green cowhide for his men.. While used for marching in the wet these stretched so that the men would have to cut them off. When the soldiers stopped at night and dried out their boots they would have to cut them off their feet.
This ‘footwear’ answered very well for camp duty, but not for marching.
From Culpeper Courthouse we went to
Fredericksburg.
This was a very hard march on account of the extremely muddy roads and the cold and freezing weather.
We went into camp at
Fredericksburg, and were at the
battle of Fredericksburg on the 13th December, 1862.
After the battle at this place we went into camp at Guinea Station.
The winters of 1862—‘63 were the hardest of the war. Our men were without tents, and had only ‘tent flies’ and brush houses.
At Guinea Station general orders were issued that the men could build fires during day, but that at night they should be extinguished, and the ashes swept away.
We slept where the fires had been.
While in camp here we were on hard duty all the time, working on breastworks from
Hamilton crossing to Spotsylvania Courthouse.
