E-text prepared by the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 31192-h.htm or 31192-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31192/pg31192-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31192/31192-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/fromrapidantoric00damerich Transcriber's note: Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_. Text enclosed by equal signs appeared as sidenotes in the original (=sidenote=). FROM THE RAPIDAN TO RICHMOND [Illustration: WILLIAM MEADE DAME PRIVATE FIRST COMPANY OF RICHMOND HOWITZERS 1864] FROM THE RAPIDAN TO RICHMOND AND THE SPOTTSYLVANIA CAMPAIGN A Sketch in Personal Narrative of the Scenes a Soldier Saw by WILLIAM MEADE DAME, D. D. Private, First Company Richmond Howitzers Baltimore Green-Lucas Company 1920 Copyright, 1920, by Harry B. Green TO MY COMRADES OF THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA [Illustration: WILLIAM MEADE DAME, D. D. RECTOR MEMORIAL PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH BALTIMORE, MD. 1920] INTRODUCTION By Thomas Nelson Page "The land where I was born" was, in my childhood, a great battleground. War--as we then thought the vastest of all wars, not only that had been, but that could ever be--swept over it. I never knew in those days a man who had not been in the war. So, "The War" was the main subject in every discussion and it was discussed with wonderful acumen. Later it took on a different relation to the new life that sprung up and it bore its part in every gathering much as the stories of Troy might have done in the land where Homer sang. To survive, however, in these reunions as a narrator one had to be a real contributor to the knowledge of his hearers. And the first requisite was that he should have been an actor in the scenes he depicted; secondly, that he should know how to depict them. Nothing less served. His hearers themselves all had experience and demanded at least not less than their own. As the time grew more distant they demanded that it should be preserved in more definite form and the details of the life grew more precious.