Reunion of Virginia Division, A. N. V. Association. 207
crawling and winding its way up the snow- covered sides of the mountain. It was one of my most painful experiences of the war, for by. noon I had gathered up a party of stragglers, a few of whom were stragglers from pure viciousness, but the rest from sheer suffer- ing. The poor fellows were actually barefooted, and their feet were cracked and bleeding on the ice, and these I had to force on, painfully climbing the frozen mountain road. We did not cross the mountain until some time after night-fall, when I reported with the prisoners and sufferers who I had brought up, and was directed to send them to their respective commands.
No more admirable march, I am sure, was ever made by any body of troops. Notwithstanding the want of shoes and clothing, Jack- son's corps had marched from Winchester to Fredericksburg, in the depth of winter, with the utmost regularit)' and precision, and took up their position behind the Massaponax hills ready for the battle.
It has never been charged that there was any straggling on the march to Gettysburg; and Lee could not have made his famous de- fensive campaign against Grant from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor with a straggling army.* That campaign was one of tactical manoeu- vring, which required for the success it attained not only disciplined but skilled troops.
There was, it is true, very little drill in our army. The Union army was formed upon and around the United States regulars and the famous Seventh regiment of New York, and other "crack" com- plete regimental organizations from the Northern cities. They had, therefore, excellent models of drilled troops on which to form the
- In singular corroboration of what I have been maintaining as the cause
of the straggling in the Maryland campaign, and that it was exceptional, since writing this I have read in The Century for July (1886), in a paper entitled " In the Wake of Battle," this account of the stragglers in Shep- herdstown at this time (September 13th, 1862) :
" They were stragglers at all events — professional, some of them, but some worn out by the incessant strain of that summer. When I say that they were hungry, I convey no impression of the gaunt starvation that looked from their cavernous eyes. All day they crowded to the doors of our houses with always the same drawling complaint: ' I've been a-marchin' an' a-fightin' for six weeks stiddy, and I ain't had n-a-rthin' to eat 'cept green apples an' green caun, an' I wish you'd please to gimme a bite to eat.'
"Their looks bore out their statements, and when they told us they had ' clean gin out,' we believed them, and went to get what we had. * * * * i know nothing of numbers, nor what force was or was not engaged in any battle, but I saw the troops march past us every summer for four years, and I know something of the appearance of a marching army, both Union and Southern. They are ahvays stragglers of course, but never before or after did I see anything comparable to the denioi alized state of the Confederates at this time. Never were want and exhaustion more visibly put before my eyes, and that they could march or fight at all seemed incredible."
