of our sick and wounded men returned to duty. We were then sent out in the neighborhood of Centerville, where we were engaged in scouting and skirmishing with the enemy's cavalry while the Army of the Potomac was in Maryland during the Antietam campaign.

On the return of Lee's army to Virginia, my regiment in Bayard's brigade was engaged in the various movements on the advance to Fredericksburg. The incident I most readily recall during this movement was the relieving of General McClellan from the command of the army and superseding him by General Burnside. At that time the army idolized McClellan. I went to a stream for water one night, where I met an infantryman. He looked so badly that I asked him what the matter was, when he replied, "Haven't you heard the news?" I said, "No." He then told me that General McClellan had been removed, whereupon he began to cry. I went back to our bivouac, as we were on the march, and reported this. I recall that we sat up in groups till well into the night discussing this, and our conclusion was that we were being used as an examining board to try candidates for the next presidency. Of course, in writing of our impressions from our limited point of view at that time, I do not wish to convey the idea that I now think McClellan should not have been superseded. The only mistake was in selecting the man that superseded him.

In due time the captain of my company, J. F. B. Mitchell, finding out that I had some clerical ability, as the sergeant who was present when I made out my enlistment papers prophesied, detailed me to make out the company's pay-rolls and do whatever company writing there was to do, in consideration of which I was, for the time being, relieved from doing guard duty. This fact was known to the members of my company who were then very friendly to me.

The night before the battle of Fredericksburg I was on picket on the river's bank opposite the town, where I heard the enemy's artillery being put in position and men making speeches to the troops. During the battle, the regiment was on the field in reserve, occasionally under fire from shells but otherwise not actively engaged. General Bayard, our brigade commander, was mortally wounded by a shell, dying the next day, the date set for his wedding, he having requested a postponement of his leave of absence when he learned there was to be a battle. When our regiment recrossed the Rappahannock I had no idea the army had been defeated; indeed, until we saw the New York papers we were ignorant of the fact.

CHAPTER V

Shortly after the battle of Fredericksburg, Captain Henry C. Weir, the adjutant-general of the division to which General D. McM. Gregg had then been assigned, asked an orderly who happened to be a member of my company, and who was then engaged carrying a despatch to his headquarters, if he could suggest a man in his regiment whom he could detail to act as clerk to make out returns and reports, his former clerk having gone home with the body of General Bayard. The man suggested me, and was told to request me to report to division headquarters. I remember being quite startled at this order, and, anxious to look as presentable as possible, I stripped and bathed in a brook, on the edges of which the ice had formed, before calling on Captain Weir. He questioned me as to my occupation before entering the army, which had been that of a clerk in my uncle's firm, T. B. Coddington & Co., metal importers, whom he knew by reputation. He also stated that he knew of my father's home on the Hudson River. Indeed, he manifested an interest in me, and, after giving me a copy of a tri-monthly report to look at, asked me if I thought I could consolidate the several regimental reports, copies of which he showed me. I made the attempt and succeeded, whereupon he said he would ask General Gregg to have me detailed at his headquarters. That detail was made out in December, 1862. Though my rank was still that of a private, my position was much improved and my surroundings much more pleasant. I was treated with great consideration by Captain Weir, and was thereafter busily engaged while in winter quarters in performing the duties of an adjutant-general's clerk, which included such writing as General Gregg required of me.

BREVET LIEUTENANT COLONEL H. C. WEIR

At the time of the battle of Chancellorsville, Gregg's division went on what was known as the Stoneman raid to Richmond. On this movement and subsequently on the march, and in all engagements as long as I was with the General, I was sent with messages and orders the same as a staff-officer.

On this raid I attracted the attention of General Gregg and the headquarters staff by my ability to sleep on horseback when on the march. Captain Weir had given me a fine horse, which happened to be a very fast walker. It was General Gregg's custom to ride alone at the head of his staff, occasionally inviting Dr. Phillips, the medical director of the division, to ride alongside of him. As soon as I would fall asleep, the bridle reins would naturally slacken and the horse begin to forge ahead. My position in the column was in rear of the officers of the staff, and with the General's orderly and bugler. Instead of restraining the horse, my comrades and the staff officers would open the way and urge him along while I, sitting upright but fast asleep, would ride alongside of our dignified General and sometimes ahead of him before he noticed me, when invariably he would wake me up, grabbing me by the arm and saying, "Meyer, wake up." Chagrined I would return to my place, the staff officers and orderlies greatly amused. This incident occurred so frequently on this Stoneman raid that it evidently made an impression on the General, because, meeting him some twenty years after the war at a reunion in Philadelphia he, on greeting me, introduced me to a group of officers and immediately recalled the fact of my so often being asleep on horseback. One day my horse strayed from the road and followed a fence up a bank until he came to a point where the slope reached the fence and he could go no farther, when the General called out, "Wake him up, he will break his neck." The jolt of the horse, however, sliding down the slope into the road awakened me, though I did not fall off. The only penalty I suffered from sleeping on horseback was the occasional loss of a cap and the scratching of my face by the branches of trees, but it undoubtedly had much to do with my being able to withstand the fatigue incident to our campaigns, since the fact is that I never was off duty for a single hour, by reason of sickness, during my whole term of service.

CHAPTER VI

On the 9th of June, 1863, occurred the battle of Brandy Station, in which more cavalry were engaged than in any battle of the Civil War. General Buford's division had crossed the Rappahannock River at Beverly Ford early in the morning. General Gregg's division crossed at Kelly's Ford, and General Duffie farther down the river, the latter being under General Gregg's command and supposed to accompany him. As we were approaching Brandy Station we heard the heavy cannonading of Buford's attack, when General Gregg, with the brigades of Colonel Windham and Colonel Kilpatrick, hurried to the battlefield. Around the station and between Culpeper and the Rappahannock the