July the lower Chesapeake, the York, and the James, literally swarmed with craft of all descriptions. At all points where it became necessary to debark troops or supplies, floating wharves were extemporized by means of canal-boats or barges; pontoonboats also came into good play for the same purpose, and there were instances, such as at Cheeseman's Creek, where the service thus rendered was, so to speak, incalculable. Yorktown evacuated, the army was at last fairly afoot, and then came the race for Richmond. Of the movement up the Peninsula, and the affairs at Williamsburg and Fair Oaks, as well as the so-called Seven Days' Fight, resulting in the retreat to James River, it is foreign to our purpose here to speak. We have only to say that, during all these operations, supplies met the troops regularly at all points, usually at a distance of but a few miles from the line of march, and that extraordinary as was the march to Harrison's Landing, the trains of the army, nevertheless, nowhere impeded or embarrassed the movement, and were all substantially gotten off safe, huge and unwieldy as they necessarily were. The movement of the trains June 29th and 30th, from the line of Fair Oaks to James River, was an experience never to be forgotten, we venture to say, by those who participated in it, as did the writer. The movement began, properly speaking, on Saturday night, June 28th, and continued on into Tuesday, July 1st. At times portions of the trains were badly under fire, as at White Oak Swamp on Sunday morning, and the enemy did not fail to pay the laggards his usual compliment of shot and shell. But notwithstanding this, scarcely a serviceable wagon, if any, was destroyed or left behind; and when at last they had all fairly debouched into the plain by Harrison's Bar-ammunition, ambulance, subsistence, and baggage-trains all complete-there was, stretching away in all directions, a perfect ocean of billowy wagon-covers, among which stray donkeys here and there, after their kind, went cavorting about like porpoises "on a bender," with an occasional forlorn performance on their infernal horns of "Wheehaugh," "Whee-haugh," which, being interpreted, means, we suppose, "Here's your mule! Here's your mule!" The march of the trains, subsequently, from Harrison's Landing to Yorktown, though excessively hot and dusty, was made without incident, as the enemy scarcely pursued, being well after Pope; and then came the transfer of the army again by water to Aquia Creek and Alexandria. Much as the army was reduced in numbers, this re-embarkation at Yorktown seemed almost interminable, although a large amount of its equipage and baggage had previously been sent by boat down James River, before leaving Harrison's Landing. The artillery and land transportation, especially, seemed as if they never would get off. They came in very slowly and chaotically at Alexandria

and Washington, and doubtless much of McClellan's hesitation and delay in moving to the relief of Pope, after landing at Alexandria, arose from the fact that both his artillery and wagons, in the main, were yet down the Potomac. The Quartermaster's Department, to be entirely candid, was here no doubt considerably to blame. How far the Commanding General was responsible for this failure, by omitting to give timely notice to his staff of his intended movement, may well be considered. But the result was a deal of unkind censure of the original Chief Quartermaster-much of it clearly unjustwho had just been relieved, with scarcely time for his successor to arrange for the pending movement in view of the vastness of the project, and the multitudinousness of its details.

The Pope and Antietam campaigns were quickly over, with nothing especially noteworthy in the Quartermaster's Department except the great loss of teams and supplies "gobbled up," chiefly by Jeb Stuart and Stonewall Jackson. There was a story rife at the time about General Rucker, the Chief Quartermaster at Washington, which is too good a commentary on the Pope campaign to be lost to history. It seems one day, when in a particularly ursine humor, he was presented by an officer with a requisition for one hundred teams to go to Warrenton, or Culpepper, or somewhere about there; the General read it slowly over, and then looking stormily up, over his glasses, at the unlucky Quartermaster, growled fiercely out, as only Rucker can growl, What do you want of these teams?" The meek reply was, "For General Pope's army." "For Pope, do you? Well, you can have 'em! Take 'em along! Don't want your receipts either!" The officer, astonished, inquired what he meant by not wanting receipts. The answer was, in the same ursine growl, "Where's the use of taking your receipts for what I know you won't keep? Jeb Stuart will have them all, to the last tar-pot and jackass, in less than a week, and so I shall instruct Captain Dana to invoice them to Bob Lee or Jeff. Davis direct!"

After this, late in the fall, came the Burnside campaign, and the fiasco at Fredericksburg for want of the pontoons. Some people, only too eager to blame others for their own shortcomings, and wholly ignorant of army routine, at the time charged the non-arrival of the pontoons to the Quartermaster-General. The truth is, however, as will be seen on a moment's reflection, that neither Meigs nor Halleck, indeed, had any thing whatever to do with the pontoons, nor will either of them be held so responsible by an impartial future. The duties of both were, and now are, of a general, supervisory, administrative nature, at general head-quarters, Washington, and therefore they had, properly, no more to do with the particular job of getting pon toons to Fredericksburg for the Army of the Potomac, than

they would have had with pitching tents at Nashville for the Army of the Cumberland, or driving a six-mule team, with one line, along the levee at New Orleans, for the Army of the Gulf. No; the Major-General Commanding had his own Chief Quartermaster, and should have looked to him, and to nobody else had no right to look to anybody else to get up his pontoon-train in time. Disagreeable as it is to say it, unfortunately for the country, the pontoon-failure at Fredericksburg was of an exact piece with the failure of the mine at Petersburg, a year and a half afterwards-twin blunders of the same brain,-"Somebody else was expected to attend to it,"—and the unerring voice of history will not fail to so pronounce them.

The long halt of the Army of the Potomac, in front of Fredericksburg, and the subsequent campaign to Chancellorsville and return, passed without matter of moment to the Quartermaster's Department. The depots of the army at first were at Belle Plain and Aquia Creek, but a few miles away at worst, and the railroad to Aquia Creek being speedily reconstructed, supplies were conveyed by it almost into the very camps, at least into the very heart of the army. But subsequently, in June, '63, when Lee crossed the Potomac, and advanced boldly into Pennsylvania, Hooker within twelve hours set his whole army in motion, and then to Gettysburg and back again to Culpepper there came a time that "tried men's souls" in the Quartermaster's Department to the utmost. The march across the country and return necessitated a constant change of depots and lines of supplies, and it required all the consummate vigilance and energy of the Chief Quartermaster to keep things going. Considerable forage, and some animals, it is true, were picked up in Pennsylvania; yet, after all, it was found that the resources of the country availed but little in supplying such a prodigious multitude. The army was never less than one hundred thousand strong, and generally more, with an average of from fifty to sixty thousand animals; and then, besides, the seesaw movement-first north, and then south-was, much of it, over almost identically the same line of march. When the army got back about Warrenton and Culpepper, so far as supplies are concerned it might as well have been in the middle of the Great Sahara. All that region had been campaigned over by both armies since the spring of '61, each side alternately seesawing east or west, north or south, as the fortune of war demanded, until the whole region was literally stripped bare of every thing available for either man or beast. The Gettysburg campaign, as we have said, was a hard one; nevertheless, the army was kept well supplied, and when at last it located at Culpepper, there was soon an abundance of every thing essential.

The subsequent campaign of the Army of the Potomac, be

VOL. III-5

ginning with the movement from Culpepper last spring, and continuing down to the present writing, has been a severe one in all respects, for all branches of the service. From the outset, General Grant cut boldly loose from his line of supplies-the Orange and Alexandria Railroad-and trusted to luck and hard blows to find another. Loading up his wagons, he turned his army, though more numerous than ever before, into a movable column, fighting as it marched, and resolved to depend for supplies on a base equally movable. His first change of base was from Culpepper to Fredericksburg or rather Belle Plain, next to Port Royal, next to the White House, and then to City Point, or at least it is still there at this writing. All of these changes involved gigantic work on the part of the Quartermaster's Department, which was all the more onerous and harassing because no one could say how long it would prove available. Nevertheless, no sooner was Fredericksburg occupied, than men were set to work to rebuild and reopen the railroad to Aquia Creek. In less than a fortnight, the road was in working order, though it involved the construction of wharves at Aquia Creek, and the building of a bridge across Potomac Creek four hundred and twenty-two feet long, by eighty-two feet high, which was finished, it is said, in two and a half days, or forty working hours. The road was run for barely a week or so, when Grant cut loose from Fredericksburg, and the base of operations was switched to Port Royal. A few days sufficed for that line, when again the base was transferred to the White House. Scarcely twenty-four hours after our advance reached Bottom's Bridge, so as to cover the necessary work, locomotives were whistling on the York River Railroad, and in less than a week the road to the White House, for all army purposes, was in full working condition. Then came the crossing of the James, and the halt at Petersburg; and, more recently, the attack on the Weldon Road, and the tenacious holding of it. This last move so lengthened his lines, that Grant called for a railroad to bring up his supplies, and almost before the country had fairly heard of the commencement of the work, a railroad ten miles long was in full blast from City Point to his extreme left. From this statement in the rough, hasty and imperfect as it necessarily is, it may well be believed that the work of thus following up and sustaining the Lieutenant-General's army has been no mere child's play. Half the job would be sufficient to engross the attention, and to tax to the utmost the energies of most men; and none but a really able man-of stout heart and fertile brain-could possibly have succeeded when assigned the whole. Any ordinary brigadier, such men as usually find their way into the command of brigades and divisions, would have broken down the campaign and starved the army long ago. That the army has not been starved, but well fed, and the cam

paign throughout stoutly maintained, let the country, in thanking others-alas, but too often far less deserving!-forget not also to thank, at least half-way, the long-suffering, much-abused, but in most instances, hard-working officers of the Quartermaster's Department.

In our next article we will consider the operations in the West.

BREECH-LOADING MUSKET.

BY MAJOR T. T. S. LAIDLEY, U. S. ORD. DEPT.

THAT the soldier should be armed and equipped in such a manner as to render him in the highest possible degree efficient, is a general proposition which will be readily acceded to by all. The nation which neglects this principle, or is slow to perceive and adopt those improvements (which, if adopted, would materially add to the efficiency of its troops), either from some mistaken idea of economy, or from a blind adherence to that which has gained a hold upon the affections by time and by valuable service, must soon or late pay dearly for its supineness or infatuation.

At no time in the history of the world has greater activity been displayed by all nations than at the present, in searching out and adopting new improvements in arms and materiel, and whatever may tend to add to their power of attack and of defence.

During the last few years the merits of the rifle-musket have been generally conceded, and this improved arm has been adopted by all nations.

Rifled cannon for field-service are used exclusively in all services except our own, to our discredit it must be said: for siege and harbor defence, they are rapidly working their way into general use. Guns of monster size are deemed not only practicable, but necessary: new explosive materials are sought : the balloon and telegraph are applied to military uses: war vessels propelled by steam have been generally introduced, and navies are regarded as incomplete, and incapable of performing their expected duties, if they have not their fleet of iron-clad vessels.

There is still another improvement that is now attracting much attention, one that has already been partially adopted, and must soon be generally introduced by all nations,—I mean the adoption of breech-loading, in place of muzzle-loading arms, for all foot, as well as mounted troops.