immediate mortification. He knew that within twenty-four or thirty-six hours Washington could depend upon receiving the troops that were being hurried up from Grant's army, but he also realised what enormous mischief might be brought about by even a momentary occupation of the national capital by Confederate troops. I had some personal interest in this side campaign. The 19th army corps, to which my own regiment belonged, had been brought from Louisiana to Virginia and had been landed on the James River to strengthen the ranks of General Butler. There had not been time to assign to us posts in the trenches and we had, in fact, not even been placed in position. We were more nearly in marching order than any other troops available and it was therefore the divisions of the 19th army corps that were selected to be hurried up to Washington. To these were added two divisions of the 6th corps. Colonel Wisewell, commanding the defences of the city, realised the nature of his problem. He had got to hold the lines of Washington, cost what it might, until the arrival of the troops from Grant. He took the bold step of placing on the picket line that night every man within reach, or at least every loyal man within reach (for plenty of the men in Washington were looking and hoping for the success of the South). The instructions usually given to pickets were in this instance reversed. The men were ordered, in place of keeping their positions hidden and of maintaining absolute quiet, to move from post to post along the whole line, and they were also ordered, without any reference to the saving of ammunition, to shoot off their carbines on the least possible pretext and without pretext. The armories were then beginning to send to the front Sharp's repeating carbines. The invention of breech-loading rifles came too late to be of service to the infantry on either side, but during the last year of the War, certain brigades of cavalry were armed with Sharp's breech-loaders. The infantry weapon used through the War by the armies of the North as by those of the South was the muzzle-loading rifle which bore the name on our side of the Springfield and on the Confederate side of the Enfield. The larger portion of the Northern rifles were manufactured in Springfield, Massachusetts, while the Southern rifles, in great part imported from England, took their name from the English factory. It was of convenience for both sides that the two rifles were practically identical so that captured pieces and captured ammunition could be interchanged without difficulty.