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 illustration. See 31353-h.htm or 31353-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/31353/pg31353-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31353/31353-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/personalrecollec00full PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR OF 1861 As Private, Sergeant and Lieutenant in the Sixty-First Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry by CHARLES A. FULLER Prepared from data found in letters, written at the time from the field to the people at home. [Illustration: Charles A. Fuller Late of the 61st N. Y. V. Inf.] News Job Printing House, Sherburne, N. Y. 1906 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS March 1st, 1861, I started for Cleveland, Ohio, to enter the law office of Boardman & Ingersoll as a law student. I was in that city at the time of the inauguration of President Lincoln. After Sumpter was fired on I was anxious to enlist and go to the front with the "Cleveland Grays," but trouble with my eyes induced me to postpone my enlistment. After the President issued his call for 300,000 additional troops, I learned that Lieut. K. Oscar Broady, a recent graduate of Madison University, who had seen some military service in Sweden, his native country, was raising a Company for the War, in which many Hamilton and Sherburne men were enrolled. Isaac Plumb, one of my most-thought-of friends, was in the number; there were others--Edgar Willey, Israel O. Foote, Fred Ames, and more whose names I do not now recall. I decided to wait no longer, but seek the enemy with the men of this Company. I left Cleveland Sept. 5th, 1861, and reached Utica Saturday afternoon in time to find that the stage down the valley had gone, and I must remain there until Monday morning, or use some other means of locomotion southward to Sherburne. The question I asked myself was, "Why not test your leg gear NOW, and see what you can do as a foot-man?" I answered "All right," and started out, though it was well into the afternoon. That evening I reached Oriskany Falls, a distance of about 20 miles. I camped for the night at the hotel, but was up the next morning before the hotel people. I left the price of the lodging on the bar, and started south. It was about 24 miles to Sherburne, which I reached about noon. I supplied the commissary department from houses along the road.