already suffered every thing short of death in its cause; and now, after such extreme hardships to give up all, was too much; but to starve to death was too much also. What was to be done?—Here was the army starved and naked, and there their country sitting still and expecting the army to do notable things while fainting from sheer starvation. All things considered, the army was not to
be blamed. Reader, suffer what we did and you will say so too.
We had borne as long as human nature could endure, and to bear longer we considered folly. Accordingly, one pleasant day, the men spent the most of their time upon the parade, growling like soreheaded dogs; at even-ening roll-call they began to show their dissatisfaction, by snapping at the officers, and acting contrary to their orders; after their dismissal from the parade, the officers went, as usual, to their quarters, except the Adjutant, who happened to remain, giving details for next day's duty to the orderly sergeants, or some other business, when the men (none of whom had left the parade) began to make him sensible that they had something in train; he said something that did not altogether accord with the soldiers' ideas of propriety, one of the men retorted, the Adjutant called him a mutinous rascal, or some such epithet, and then left the parade. This man, then stamping the butt of his musket upon the ground, as much as to say, I am in a passion, called out, "who will parade with me?" The whole regiment immediately fell in and formed. We had made no plans for our future operations, but while we were consulting how to proceed, the fourth regiment, which lay on our left, formed, and came and paraded with us. We now concluded to go in a body to the other two regiments that belonged to our brigade, and induce them to join with us; these regiments lay forty or fifty rods in front of us, with a brook and bushes between. We did not wish to have any one in particular to command, lest he might be singled out for a Court Martial to exercise its demency upon; we therefore gave directions to the drummers to give certain signals on the drums; at the first signal we shouldered our arms, at the second we faced, at the third we began our march to join with the other two regiments, and went off with music playing. By this time our officers had ob-
