The summer passed away and the golden months of autumn came round. The troops were organized into brigades and divisions. They were drilled daily. In the morning at six o'clock the drummers beat the reveille. The soldiers sprang to their feet at the sound, and formed in company lines to answer the roll-call. Then they had breakfast of hard-tack and coffee. After breakfast the guards were sent out. At eight o'clock there were company drills in marching, in handling their muskets, in charging bayonet, and resisting an imaginary onset from the enemy. At twelve o'clock they had dinner,—more hard-tack, pork or beef, or rice and molasses. In the afternoon there were regimental, brigade, and sometimes division drills,—the men carrying their knapsacks, canteens, haversacks, and blankets,—just as if they were on the march. At sunset each regiment had a dress parade. Then each soldier was expected to be in his best trim. In well-disciplined regiments, all wore white gloves when they appeared on dress parade. It was a fine sight,—the long line of men in blue, the ranks straight and even, each soldier doing his best. Marching proudly to the music of the band, the light of the setting sun falling aslant upon their bright bayonets, and the flag they loved waving above them, thrilling them with remembrances of the glorious deeds of their fathers, who bore it aloft at Saratoga, Trenton, and Princeton, at Queenstown and New Orleans, at Buena Vista and Chapultepec, who beneath its endearing folds laid the foundations of the nation and secured the rights of civil and religious liberty. Each soldier felt that he would be an unworthy son, if traitors and rebels were permitted to overthrow a government which had cost so much sacrifice and blood and treasure, and which was the hope of the oppressed throughout all the world.

In the evening there were no military duties to be performed, and the soldiers told stories around the camp-fires, or sang songs, or had a dance; for in each company there was usually one who could play the violin. Many merry times they had. Some sat in their tents and read the newspapers or whatever they could find to interest them, with a bayonet stuck in the ground for a candle-stick. There were some who, at home, had attended the Sabbath school. Although in camp, they did not forget what they had left behind. The Bible was precious to them. They read its sacred pages and treasured its holy truths. Sometimes they had a prayer-meeting, and asked God to bless them, the friends they had left behind, and the country for which they were ready to die, if need be, to save it from destruction.

But at the tap of the drum at nine o'clock the laughter, the songs, the dances, the stories, the readings, and the prayer-meetings, all were brought to a close, the lights were put out, and silence reigned throughout the camp, broken only by the step of the watchful sentinel.

The soldiers soon grew weary of this monotony. They had been accustomed to an active life. It was an army different from any ever before organized. It was composed in a great degree of thinking men. Many of them were leading citizens in the towns where they lived. They were well educated and were refined in their manners. They knew there was to be hard fighting and a desperate contest, that many never would return to their homes, but would find their graves upon the field of battle; yet they were ready to meet the enemy, and waited impatiently for orders to march.

There were grand reviews of troops during the fall, by which the officers and soldiers became somewhat accustomed to moving in large bodies. All of the troops which could be spared from the fortifications and advanced

positions were brought together at Bailey's Cross-roads, after the Rebels evacuated Munson's Hill, to be reviewed by the President and General McClellan. There were seventy thousand men. It was a grand sight. Each regiment tried to outdo all others in its appearance and its marching. They moved by companies past the President, bands playing national airs, the drums beating, and the flags waving. There were several hundred pieces of artillery, and several thousand cavalrymen. The ground shook beneath the steady marching of the great mass of men, and the tread of thousands of hoofs. It was the finest military display ever seen in America.

It was expected that the army would soon move upon the enemy. General McClellan, in a letter to the President, advised that the advance should not be postponed later than the 25th of November. The time passed rapidly. The roads were smooth and hard. The days were golden with sunshine, and the stars shone from a cloudless sky at night; but there were no movements during the month, except reconnaissances by brigades and divisions.

The Rebels erected batteries on the south side of the Potomac, below the Occoquan, and blockaded it. They had destroyed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake Canal, so that the Union army and the city of Washington were dependent on the one line of railroad to Baltimore for all its supplies. It was very desirable that the Potomac should be opened. General Hooker, who commanded a division at Budd's Ferry, wished very much to attack the Rebels, with the aid of the navy, and capture the batteries, but General McClellan did not wish one division to move till the whole army was ready. December passed, and the year completed its round. Cold nights and blustering days came, and the army, numbering two hundred thousand men, went into winter quarters.

CHAPTER II.

BALL'S BLUFF.

There were but two events of importance during the long period of inactivity in the autumn of 1861,—a disaster at Ball's Bluff and a victory at Dranesville.

In October General Stone's division of the Army of the Potomac was at Poolesville in Maryland. General Banks's division was at Darnestown, between Poolesville and Washington. General McCall's division was at a little hamlet called Lewinsville, on the turnpike leading from the chain bridge to Leesburg, on the Virginia side. The main body of the Rebels was at Centreville, but there was a brigade at Leesburg.

It is a beautiful and fertile country around that pleasant Virginia town. West of the town are high hills, called the Catoctin Mountains. If we were standing on their summits, and looking east, we should see the town of Leesburg at our feet. It is a place of three or four thousand inhabitants. There are several churches, a court-house, a market-place, where, before the war, the farmers sold their wheat, and corn, oats, and garden vegetables. Three miles east of the town we behold the Potomac sparkling in the sunlight, its current divided by Harrison's Island. The distance from the Virginia shore to the island is about one hundred and eighty feet; from the island to the Maryland shore it is six or seven hundred feet. The bank on the Virginia side is steep, and seventy-five or eighty feet high, and is called Ball's Bluff. A canal runs along the Maryland shore. Four miles below the island is Edward's Ferry, and three miles east of it is Poolesville.

In October, General McClellan desired to make a movement which would compel General Evans, commanding the Rebels at Leesburg, to leave the place. He therefore directed General McCall to move up to Dranesville, on the Leesburg turnpike. Such a movement would threaten to cut General Evans off from Centreville. At the same time he sent word to General Stone, that if he were to make a demonstration towards Leesburg it might drive them away.

On Sunday night, at sundown, October 20th, General