over us. Not a man in our regiment was hit.

After this volley we were complimented with a few shots from a battery of six-pound field pieces, which also went wide of their mark—assuming that they were shooting at us.

Having received these compliments, we were withdrawn from the field and returned to our camp at Centerville. This was our part in the skirmish of Blackburn’s Ford, three days before the first battle of Bull Run.

On the next day we were ordered to establish a picket line between Centerville and Bull Run. When marching out from our camp toward the Run, we could see cars loaded with Confederate soldiers as their train crossed the road we were on. When they disembarked and formed in line the glistening of their bright gun barrels gave the impression they were aiming at us. This excited one of our boys terribly. He jumped out into the centre of the road, swinging his hat and yelling as loudly as he possibly could—“Don’t shoot this way!! There are folks in the road!!”

These two stories illustrate what we knew at that time about war.

On the night before the battle I was detailed to do guard duty before General Dick Richardson’s headquarters. He was occupying a small house. About eleven o’clock he came out and asked me if I would be on duty there at three o’clock in the morning. I answered “Yes.” Then he said pointing in the direction of the Stone Bridge, “About three o’clock in the morning a cannon will be fired over there. When you hear it, call me at once. A great battle will be fought here tomorrow.” I needed nothing more to keep me awake that night, nor did the General. He was out two or three times before the alarm gun was fired.

On the day of the first battle of Bull Run, having been on guard duty all night, I was left in camp when my regiment was ordered out. I took advantage of the opportunity to post myself on the Centerville Hill where I could overlook the field of action. Thus it happened that I was on the spot where the Congressional picnic party spread its luncheon. A number of members of Congress, with their ladies, drove out to Centerville from Washington in their carriages to have a picnic and see the battle.

From that position I saw the beginning of the panic when our troops on the right gave way and started for the rear in indescribable disorder. I went to our camp, secured my gun and accoutrements and joined in the stampede. Several times that night, when stopping for a little rest, I, and all about me, was aroused and terrified by the cry—“The black horse cavalry are coming!” The next morning I was safely back across the Potomac on the old Chain Bridge camping ground, competent to certify that the distance from Washington to Centerville is—three days going, and one night coming back.

As soon as our regiment got together we were ordered to go into camp on the Arlington Flats, south side of the Potomac, opposite Washington. There it was that Abraham Lincoln gave courage and cheer to the army by driving slowly around among the troops in an open carriage, stopping a moment here and there to speak to or take the hand of a private soldier, his face inspired with the solemn grandeur of an awful duty to prosecute the war for the preservation of the Union to a successful conclusion, or the bitter end. I see his face now, colored and featured as can never be done by brush or chisel. It inspires me now, as it did then, with a resolve such as every soldier in that army felt as he looked upon Lincoln’s face that day—a resolve unformed in words but possessing my life—always to do my duty for the cause of human rights and human welfare on every occasion and in every way, as God gives me light to see it and power to do it.

In the spring of 1862 my regiment was transported from Alexandria, Va., to Hampton Roads, when the Army of the Potomac changed its base to start its march “On to