SOLDIERING
—IN—
NORTH CAROLINA;

—BEING—

THE EXPERIENCES OF A 'TYPO' IN THE PINES, SWAMPS, FIELDS,
SANDY ROADS, TOWNS, CITIES, AND AMONG THE FLEAS,
WOOD-TICKS, 'GRAY-BACKS,' MOSQUITOES, BLUE-TAIL
FLIES, MOCCASIN SNAKES, LIZARDS, SCORPIONS,
REBELS, AND OTHER REPTILES, PESTS AND
VERMIN OF THE 'OLD NORTH STATE.'

EMBRACING AN ACCOUNT OF THE THREE-YEARS AND NINE-MONTHS
MASSACHUSETTS REGIMENTS IN THE DEPARTMENT,
THE FREEDMEN ETC., ETC., ETC.

BY "ONE OF THE SEVENTEENTH,"

Thomas Kirwan

ILLUSTRATED.

BOSTON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THOMAS KIRWAN.
1864.

Entered According to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by
THOMAS KIRWAN,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

The contents of the following pages are presented to the public as matters of fact. They embody some of the writer's experiences while serving his country in the "land of cotton." It is true his experiences are tame and unromantic when compared with those of some of the men of the Potomac or the Cumberland; but they are the best he can offer, and need no apology, as the style does, which is rough and unpolished.

Besides giving an account of the 17th Mass. Reg't, and its participation in the engagements at Kinston, Whitehall, and Goldsboro, something is said of the other old regiments in the department, and the nine months' men,—also, an account of the contrabands, their habits and disposition—anecdotes, &c.

DEDICATION.

To the officers and men of the Seventeenth Massachusetts
Regiment, who, through no fault of theirs, have only
lacked the opportunities to render their organization
as famous as that of any regiment from
the old Bay State: whose services have
been mostly of that passive character
—upon the outpost picket, and
performing arduous duty in
the midst of a malarial
country—that suffers
and endures much
without exciting
comment or adding
to the laurels, of which
every true soldier is so proud:

THIS HUMBLE WORK IS DEDICATED,

By one who, with them, has braved the "pestilence that walketh
abroad at noonday," the fatigues of the march,
and the dangers of the battle.

PART 1.

ENLISTMENT—DEPARTURE—THE VOYAGE—HATTERAS—UP THE NEUSE—NEWBERN—AN ACCOUNT OF THE 17TH—ON PICKET—DOING PROVOST DUTY IN NEWBERN, ETC.

It has been said that man is essentially a "fighting animal,"—that in this "world's broad field of battle" his life, from the cradle to the grave, is one continued struggle against want and its attendant circumstances,—and that he is the greatest who, be his position what it may, acts well his part. If this be true—and I think it is—then the man who goes to the war only exchanges one mode of strife for another—"the whips and scorns of time," for interminable drilling, "hard tack and salt horse,"—"the oppressor's wrong," for the hardships of the march and the dangers of the battle,—"the proud man's contumely," for the murmurings at home that he does not "clean out" the rebels in a week or two,—"the law's delay," for the tedium of garrison and camp life,—"the insolence of office," for the rule (not always gentle or humane) of men placed over him,—and the "bare bodkin," for the sword and the bayonet. And yet—and yet—

The severe checks and disasters experienced by the Union arms in the Spring campaign of 1862, culminating in the "seven days' fight" before Richmond, and the retreat of McClellan's noble but suffering and crippled army to James river, while it spread sorrow and mourning throughout the land, had the effect of awakening those in power to a full sense of the nation's peril. When the President called for more men, thereby giving effect to the wishes of the loyal people, I was one of those who helped to swell the volume of that mighty response which echoed back from the hills and prairies, cities and villages, towns and hamlets:

"We are coming, father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!"

Like others, I had to mourn the loss of a friend,—a brave young fellow, who was killed in the second of the "seven days' fight," and determined to fill his place, if I could.

On the 4th of August, 1862, I entered my name as a "raw recruit" for Co. F, 19th Mass. Reg't, as one of the quota of the town of Malden. A friend, struck by my example, or, perhaps, being in that state of mind which needs but little to turn one way or the other, joined with me; but upon going to the office in Boston where enlistments for the 19th were "done up," we were told recruiting for it was stopped. How times have altered since then,—now, I believe, it would take a battalion to fill it. We were in a fix (at least I was, who wished to go in the 19th), but there was a remedy at hand. A recruiting officer for the 17th, who had an office in Union street, received us willingly, and after being examined and sworn in, we were packed off, with some twenty other recruits, to Camp Cameron in North Cambridge. It was late in the evening when we arrived there, and no preparation being made for us—owing, I suppose, to the constant and rapid influx of recruits, which taxed to their utmost the various departments to fit out and provide for,—we had to turn in, supperless, to a bunk of downy boards, with no covering but our thin citizens' summer clothes. I thought it was a very uncomfortable resting place at the time, but it was nothing to what I have since known in the way of sleeping accommodation. The next morning I had leisure to look around me and take a survey of the mass of human nature that there commingled for the first time. And truly it was a heterogeneous compound of representatives of nearly every race of people in Europe, and plentifully sprinkled among them was the leaven of the whole—smart, shrewd, intelligent, quick-eyed and quick-witted Americans. And such a confusing babble as prevailed I never heard before. Wrangling and swearing, drinking and eating, talking and laughing,—all combined to give me no very agreeable foretaste of what I had to expect in my new vocation. I noticed others, new, like myself, to such scenes, who seemed mentally dumbfounded, or unconsciously comparing the quiet routine of the life they led at home to the new one they had assumed, and, no doubt, to the great advantage of the former and dislike for the latter. But happily for us all, being the creatures of circumstances, the pliability of our natures leads us to be quickly reconciled to our lot, whatever it may be. The change of life from a citizen to that of a soldier is so radical that few like it at first; but by degrees it becomes endurable, and finally, often, desirable. The recent re-enlistments prove