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On April 23rd the battery was attached to Chalmers Brigade, and marched twelve miles over awful roads of sticky mud and water to Monterey, where everything was next morning put in line of battle but the rifle and cannon firing was a mere reconnaissance of the enemy and all hands bivouaced in place on the wet ground. Here much sickness prevailed and the rains were continuous.
On Oct. 4th leaving vicinity of Bardstown, the battery passed through Springfield, just as citizens were leaving church on the 5th Sunday, and on the 6th passed through Perryville and on to within a mile of Harrodsburg and bivouaced for the night. On Tuesday 7th, the command retraced its march back to within two miles of Perryville, sleeping at their guns during the night.
Both officers rejoined us in a few days. We reached Ringold on the evening of the 19th of September, and marched during the night in the direction of the day's battlefield. About midnight we crossed over the sluggish stream of Chickamauga, at Alexander's Bridge, and bivouaced near Hood's Division, already encamped.
During the march of the 12th the men had to pull themselves up precipitous inclines by the twigs and undergrowth that lined the mountain side, or hold themselves in position by the trees in front. At night we bivouaced on the mountain. We could see the fires all along the mountain side and gorges through Pleasant Valley and up on South Mountain, where the troops of Wright had camped opposite.
Beyond the road we found strong rifle-pits, which the enemy had abandoned. During the day news reached us that the works in front of Petersburg had been taken, and there was general rejoicing. That night we bivouaced near the Appomattox River. April 3d we moved, at eight in the morning. Some firing was heard on our left, and many prisoners met us as we marched along.
By the time I had pawed out, I could not, if laid out, have been distinguished from a mud sill; but I was too near gone to speak bad words, and so went on in silence, weighing five pounds more than before my descent. Before long we halted and bivouaced for the night. The next morning, the 27th, our regiment started about 10 o'clock, and was thrown out as an advance guard to our baggage train.
And then above the low moans of the wounded and dying came the distant notes of the church bells in Richmond calling men and women again to the house of God. There was no shout of triumph no cheering hosts only the low moan of death and the sharp cry of a boy in pain. The men in blue could have moved in and bivouaced on the ground they had lost. The men in gray had no strength left.
We bivouaced for the night on the roadside, ten miles from Antietam Creek, where Lee was at the time concentrating his army, and where on the next day was to be fought the most stubbornly contested and bloody battle of modern times, if we take in consideration the number of troops engaged, its duration, and its casualties.
City of a thousand political convulsions, city of a million crimes her streets have run with human blood, horrors unspeakable have stained her history, civil strife has scarred her monuments, the German conqueror insolently has bivouaced within her walls.
Some took the dirt road, while others kept the railroad track, and in this way all organizations were lost sight of, but at night they collected together in regiments, joined the wagon trains, and bivouaced for the night. Sometimes it would be midnight before the last of the stragglers came up.
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