The Third and Sixth
Ohio, with Loomis' battery, left camp at half-past three in the afternoon, and
took the Huntersville turnpike for Big Springs, where Lee's army has been
encamped for some months. At nine o'clock we reached Logan's Mill, where the
column halted for the night. It had rained heavily for some hours, and was
still raining. The boys went into camp thoroughly wet, and very hungry and
tired; but they soon had a hundred fires kindled, and, gathering around these, prepared
and ate supper.
I never looked upon
a wilder or more interesting scene. The valley is blazing with camp-fires; the
men flit around them like shadows. Now some indomitable spirit, determined that
neither rain nor weather shall get him down, strikes up:
Oh!
say, can you see by the dawn's early light,
What
so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose
broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er
the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
A hundred voices
join in, and the very mountains, which loom up in the fire-light like great
walls, whose tops are lost in the darkness, resound with a rude melody befiting
so wild a night and so wild a scene. But the songs are not all patriotic. Love
and fun make contribution also, and a voice, which may be that of the
invincible Irishman, Corporal Casey, sings:
’T
was a windy night, about two o'clock in the morning,
An Irish lad, so tight, all the wind and
weather scorning,
At Judy Callaghan's door, sitting upon the
paling,
His love tale he did pour, and this is part of
his wailing:
Only say you'll be mistress Brallaghan;
Don't say nay, charming Judy Callaghan.
A score of voices
pick up the chorus, and the hills and mountains seem to join in the Corporal's
appeal to the charming Judy:
Only
say you'll be mistress Brallaghan;
Don't
say nay, charming Judy Callaghan.
Lieutenant Root is
in command of Loomis' battery. Just before reaching Logan's one of his
provision wagons tumbled down a precipice, severely injuring three men and
breaking the wagon in pieces.
SOURCE: John
Beatty, The Citizen-soldier: Or, Memoirs of a Volunteer, pp. 75-7
