Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
History
Military Reminiscences of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1861-November 1863
Cox, Jacob D. (Jacob Dolson)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives
This little flurry over, the quarters were soon got in as
comfortable shape as rough lumber could make them, and the work of
drill and instruction was systematized. The men were not yet armed,
so there was no temptation to begin too soon with the manual of the
musket, and they were kept industriously employed in marching in
single line, by file, in changing direction, in forming columns of
fours from double line, etc., before their guns were put in their
hands. Each regiment was treated as a separate camp, with its own
chain of sentinels, and the officers of the guard were constantly
busy teaching guard and picket duty theoretically to the reliefs off
duty, and inspecting the sentinels on post. Schools were established
in each regiment for field and staff and for the company officers,
and Hardee's Tactics was in the hands of everybody who could procure
a copy. It was one of our great inconveniences that the supply of
the authorized Tactics was soon exhausted, and it was difficult to
get the means of instruction in the company schools. An abridgment
was made and published in a very few days by Thomas Worthington, a
graduate of West Point in one of the earliest classes,--of 1827, I
think,--a son of one of the first governors of Ohio. This eccentric
officer had served in the regular army and in the Mexican War, and
was full of ideas, but was of so irascible and impetuous a temper
that he was always in collision with the powers that be, and spoiled
his own usefulness. He was employed to furnish water to the camp by
contract, and whilst he ruined himself in his efforts to do it well,
he was in perpetual conflict with the troops, who capsized his
carts, emptied his barrels, and made life a burden to him. The
quarrel was based on his taking the water from the river just
opposite the camp, though there was a slaughter-house some distance
above. Worthington argued that the distance was such that the
running water purified itself; but the men wouldn't listen to his
science, vigorously enforced as it was by idiomatic expletives, and
there was no safety for his water-carts till he yielded. He then
made a reservoir on one of the hills, filled it by a steam-pump, and
carried the water by pipes to the regimental camps at an expense
beyond his means, and which, as it was claimed that the scheme was
unauthorized, was never half paid for. His subsequent career as
colonel of a regiment was no more happy, and talents that seemed fit
for highest responsibilities were wasted in chafing against
circumstances which made him and fate seem to be perpetually playing
at cross purposes. [Footnote: He was later colonel of the
Forty-sixth Ohio, and became involved in a famous controversy with
Halleck and Sherman over his conduct in the Shiloh campaign and the
question of fieldworks there. He left the service toward the close
of 1862.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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