On the morning the city was put under martial law, I found the streets full of armed police in army blue, and all, without respect to age, compelled to report at the headquarters of their respective districts for enrolment. An unwilling citizen, seeing the bayonet levelled at him, could but yield to the inexorable logic of military despotism. It was perilous to walk the streets without a pass. At every corner stood a sentinel.

The colored men were roughly handled by the Irish police. From hotels and barber shops, in the midst of their labors, these helpless people were pounced upon and often bareheaded and in shirtsleeves, just as seized, driven in squads, at the point of the bayonet, and gathered in vacant yards and guarded. What rendered this act more than ordinarily atrocious was, that they, through their head men, had, at the first alarm, been the earliest to volunteer their services to our mayor, for the defence of our common homes. It was a sad sight to see human beings treated like reptiles.

Enrolled in companies we were daily drilled. One of these in our ward was composed of old men, termed "Silver Grays. Among its members were the venerable Judge Leavitt, of the United States Supreme Court, and other eminent citizens. Grandfathers were seen practicing the manual, and lifting alternate feet to the cadence of marktime.

At this stage of affairs the idea that our colored citizens possessed war-like qualities was a subject for scoffing; the scoffers forgetting that the race in ancestral Africa, including even the women, had been in war since the days of Ham; strangely oblivious also to the fact that our foreign-born city police could only by furious onslaughts, made with Hibernian love of the thing, quell the frequent pugnacious outbreaks of the crispy-haired denisons of our own Bucktown. From this view, or more probably a delicate sentiment of tenderness, instead of being armed and sent forth to the dangers of battle, they were consolidated into a peaceful brigade of workers in the trenches back of Newport, under the philanthropic guidance of the Hon. William M. Dickson.

The daily morning march of the corps down Broadway to labor was a species of the mottled picturesque. At their head was the stalwart, manly form of the landlord of the Dumas house, Colonel Harlan. Starting

back on the honest, substantial, coal-black foundation, all shades of color were exhibited, degenerating out through successive gradations to an ashy white; the index of AngloSaxon fatherhood of the chivalrous American type. Arrayed for dirt-work in their oldest clothes; apparently the fags of every conceivable kind of cast-off, kicked-about, and faded-out garments; crownless and lop-eared hats, diverse boots; with shouldered pick, shovel, and hoe; this merry, chattering, piebald, grotesque body, shuffled along amid grins and jeers, reminding us of the ancient nursery distich:

"Hark! hark! hear the dogs bark,
The beggars are coming to town,
Some in rags, some in tags,

And some in velvet gowns."

Tuesday night, September 9, 1862, was starlight; the air soft and balmy. With others I was on guard at an improvised armory, the old American Express buildings, on Third street near Broadway. Three hours past midnight from a signal tower three blocks east of us a rocket suddenly shot high in the air; then the fire-bell pealed an alarm. All was again quiet. Half an hour passed. Hurrying footsteps neared us. They were those of the indefatigable, public-spirited John D. Caldwell. Kirby Smith," said he quickly, "is advancing on the city. The military are to muster on the landing and cross the river at sunrise."

Six o'clock struck as I entered my own door to make preparations for my departure. The good woman was up. The four little innocents-two of a kind-were asleep in the bliss of ignorance, happy in quiet slumber. A few moments of hurried preparation and I was ready for the campaign. The provisions were these a heavy blanket-shawl, a few good cigars, a haversack loaded with eatables, and a black bottle of medicinal liquid-cherry bounce-very choice.

As I stepped out on the pavement my neighbor did the same. He, too, was off for the war. At each of our adjoining chamberwindows stood a solitary female. Neither could see the other though not ten feet apart. a house dividing wall intervening. Sadness and merriment were personified. Tears bedewed and apprehension elongated the face of the one. Laughter dimpled and shortened the face of the other. The one thought of

her protector as going forth to encounter the terrors of battle; visions of wounds and death were before her. The other thought of hers with only a prospect of a little season of rural refreshment on the Kentucky hills, to return in safety with an appetite ravenous as a wolf's for freshly dug pink-eyes and Beresford's choice cuts.

We joined our regiment at the landing. This expanse of acres was crowded with armed citizens in companies and regiments. Two or three of our frail, egg-shell river steamers, converted into gun-boats, were receiving from drays bales of hay for bulwarks. The pontoon was a moving panorama of newly made warriors, and wagons of munitions hastening southward. Back of the plain of Covington and Newport rose the softly rounded hills; beyond these were our bloodthirsty foe. Our officers tried to manoeuvre our regiment. They were too ignorant to manoeuvre themselves; it was like handling a rope of sand. But in my absence they had somehow managed to get that long line of men arranged into platoons. Then as I took my place the drums beat, fifes squeaked, and we crossed the pontoon. The people of Covington filled their doorways and windows to gaze at the passing pageant. To my fancy they looked scowlingly. No cheers, no smiles greeted us. It was a staring silence. The rebel army had been largely recruited from the town.

March! march! march! We struck the hills. The way up seemed interminable. The boiling September sun poured upon us like a furnace. The road was as an ash heap. Clouds of limestone dust whitened us like millers, filling our nostrils and throats with impalpable powder. The cry went up, Water! water! Little or none was to be had. The unusual excitement and exertion

told upon me. Years before, I had, bearing my knapsack, performed pedestrian tours of thousands of miles. Had twice walked across New York, once from the Hudson to the lake; in the hottest of summer had footed it from Richmond to Lynchburg. No forty or fifty miles a day had ever wilted me like this march of only four. But my muscles had been relaxed by years of continuous office labor. I had been on my feet on guard-duty all night.

Near the top of the hills, some 500 feet above the Ohio level, our regiment halted, when our officers galloped ahead. We broke ranks and lay down under the wayside fence. Five minutes elapsed. Back cantered the cortege. "Fall into line! fall into line! Quick, men!" was the cry. They rode among us. Our colonel exclaimed, "You are now going into battle! The enemy are advancing! You will receive sixty rounds of cartridges! Do your duty, men! do your duty! I fancied it a ruse to test our courage, and so experienced a sense of

weary faces, dirty, sweaty, and blowsy with the burning heat.

I dropped my cartridges into my haversack along with my food. Our captain, in his musical, pleasant voice, gave us instructions, though he had never studied war. "Gentlemen! these cartridges are peculiar; you put the ball in first and the powder on top! Some one whispered in his ear. "Gentlemen, he again exclaimed, with a significant scowl and shake of his head, "I was mistaken; you must put the powder in first and the ball on top! We did so. We had elected Billy captain, for he was genial and of a good family.

us.

We again shuffled upward. Suddenly as the drawing of a curtain, a fine, open, rolling country with undulating ravines burst upon Two or three farm mansions with half concealing foliage and corn-fields appeared in the distance; beyond, a mile away, the fringed line of a forest; above, a cloudless sky and a noon-day sun. The road we were on penetrated these woods. In these were concealed the unknown thousands of our warexperienced foe.

On the summit of the hills we had so laboriously gained, defending the approach by the road, ran our line of earth-works. On our right was Fort Mitchell; to our left, for hundreds of yards, rifle-pits. The fort and pits were filled with armed citizens, and a regiment or two of green soldiers in their new suits. Vociferous cheers greeted our appearing. "How are you, H.?' struck my attention. It was the cheerful voice of a tall, slender gentleman in glasses, who did my legal business, John W. Herron.

Turning off to the left into the fields in front of these, and away beyond, we halted an hour or so in line of battle, the nearest regiment to the enemy. We waited in expectation of an attack, too exhausted to fight, or, perhaps, even to run. Thence we moved back into an orchard, behind a rail-fence, on rather low ground; our left, and the extreme left of all our forces, resting on a farm-house. Our pioneers went to work strengthening our permanent position, cutting down brush and small trees, and piling them against the fence. Here, we were in plain view, a mile in front, of the ominous forest. When night came on, in caution, our camp-fires were extinguished. We slept on hay in the open air, with our loaded muskets by our sides, and our guards and pickets doubled.

shame.

Not

No

intervals of three or four minutes, broken perhaps by a solitary pop. Again continuous pops, like a feu-de-joie, with another lull, and so on through the long hours. Some of our men were wounded, and others, it was reported, killed. With the naked eye we caught occasional glimpses of the skirmishers in a corn-field near the woods. With a glass a man by my side said he saw the butternut-colored garments of the foe.

Toward evening a furious thunder-storm drove us to our tents of blankets and brushwood bowers. It wet us through and destroyed the cartridges in our cotton haversacks. Just as the storm was closing, a tremendous fusilade on our right, and the cries of our officers, The enemy are upon us; turn out! turn out!" brought us to the fence again. The rebels, we thought, had surprised us and would be dashing down in a moment with their cavalry through the orchard in our rear. Several of our companies fired off their muskets in that direction, and to the manifest danger of a line of our own sentinels. It was a false alarm, and arose in the 110th Ohio, camped on the hill to our right.

You may ask what my sensations were as I thus stood, back to the fence, with uplifted musket in expectant attitude? To be honest, my teeth chattered uncontrollably. I never boasted of courage. Drenched to the marrow by the cold rain, I was shivering before the alarm, and so I reasoned in this way-" Our men are all raw, our officers in the same doughy condition. We are armed with the old, condemned Belgian rifle. Not one in ten can be discharged. All my reading in history has ground the fact into me, that militia, situated like us, are worthless when attacked by veterans. An hundred experienced cavalrymen dashing down with drawn sabres, revolvers and secesh yells will scatter us in a twinkling. When the others run, and I know they will, I won't. I'll drop beside this fence, simulate death, and open an eye to the culminating circumstances. not aching for a fight. Ambitious youths going in on their muscles, alas! are apt to come out on their backs.

Unlike Norvel, I could not say:

"I had heard of battles and longed

I was

To follow to the field some warlike chap."

When at school I never fought excepting when my pugnacity was aroused on seeing large boys tyrannize over small ones. I never slew anything larger than a cat, which had scratched me, and at this, as soon as done, I child-like, as child I was, repenting, sat down and cried. I am soft-hearted as my uncle Toby with the fly-"Go, poor devil! the world is large enough for both you and me." To pit my valuable life against one of these low Southern whites-half animals, fierce as hyenas, degraded as serfs-appeared a manifest incongruity. It never seemed so plain before. It was tackling the beast in the only point where he was strong.

Some things were revealed to me by this soldier life. The alarming rumors current. The restraints upon one's liberty, imprisoned within the lines of the regiment. The sensation of being ordered around by small men in high places, and not admirable in any. The waste of war, piles of bread, watersoaked by rain into worthless pulp. The vacuity of mind from the want of business for continuous thought. The picturesque attitudes of scores of men sleeping on heaps of straw; seen by the uncertain light of night. The importance of an officer's horse beyond that of a common soldier, shown by the refusal of hay on which to sleep on the night of our arrival, because the colonel's beast wanted it. Didn't our good mother earth furnish a bed?

In our company were three of us-William J. Flagg, Samuel Davis and myself, not relatives in any way-who, in a New England city, distant nearly a thousand miles, had, over thirty years before, been school-mates. It illustrated a peculiar phase of American habits. We had some odd characters. Our fifer, a short, spare-built, wan-faced man, had been in the British army-had seen service in Afghanistan, the other side of the globe. Another, a German lieutenant, had experience of war in our country—was at Shiloh. He was imaginative. I talked with him in the night. To my query of the probability of a night attack, he replied, "Yes, the secesh always attack in that way. Past midnight as he was going the rounds of the pickets as officer of the guard, he said he saw crouching in the shadow of a ravine a large body of rebels. He ran to headquarters and aroused our colonel and staff; but when they arrived at the seeing point, lo! the foe had vanished. A fat, gray-headed captain with protuberant abdomen came to me soon after our arrival and with an impressive countenance discoursed of the perils of our position. In this I quite agreed with him. Then putting his hand to his stomach and giving his head a turn to one side, after the usual manner of invalids in detailing their woes, he uttered in lugubrious tones- I am very sick; the march over has been too much for me; I feel a severe attack of my old complaint, cholera morbus, coming on." After this I missed him. He had got a permit from the surgeon and returned home to be nursed. Our medical man, Dr. Dandridge, was old Virginia born; and I had, notwithstanding his generous qualities, suspected him of secesh sympathies. I wish to be charitable, but I must say this confirmed my suspicion; it was evident he wished to get the fighting men out of the way!

Saturday afternoon, the 13th, we began our return march. The militia were no longer needed, for the rebels had fallen back, and thousands of regular soldiers had been pouring into the city and spreading over the hills. Our return was an ovation. The landing was black with men, women and children. We recrossed the pontoon amid cheers and the boom of cannon. Here, on the safe side