Step after step advanced with measured tread,
Step after step we nearer gain the foe;
Our brave men fall, yet on our numbers go.
Across the railroad track by Reno led,
We nailed our banner to the brick-yard shed,

And proudly formed, inside the rebel den,

Rushed down their works, two hundred noble men.

Before our charge the foe in terror runs,

Till Clark in triumph straddles one' their guns :
When, lo! from yonder wood the mists arise,
And thrice a thousand rebels greet our eyes.
Appalling sight, -no succor comes to aid;
Their muskets glitter in the forest's shade;
In vain John Dunn and Walcott seek to throw
The cannon Clark had straddled, on the foe.
Too late, too late, 't is death to longer stay;
As they rushed in, so must they rush away;
And o'er the parapet, through ditch and fen,
They change position, those two hundred men !
Yet short the triumph that the rebels won ;
Leftward the balance of our men come on,
And backward fly they to their waiting shade,
Appalled at sight of so much Yankee blade;
While Frazer, with a soldier's noble vim,
Brings in as prisoners those who captured him.

The field is won, but as our shouts arise,

One weltering form attracts our saddened eyes;
Each comrade weeping as his eye discerns
The senseless corpse of our loved Frazar Stearns.
Not more to him than all who nobly fell,
Heroic hearts who served their country well;
To each a nation's willing hands shall raise
A shaft, to tell their noble sacrifice;
And their proud State in times not distant far
Shall send her garnerers to the field of war,
And bear those ashes home she loved to trust,
To blend for aye with her historic dust.

The battle o'er, we view those scenes anew,
And wondering, gaze on what brave men can do ;
For had the rebels in the conflict fought
As freemen fighting for their country ought,
Sad were the hour we met them in the fight,
And sadder still the morning's gory sight.
The fight was o'er, and on our banner shone
A second name, to tell of victory won.

My task is o'er with your first victory won.
The Isle of Roanoke heard your signal gun;
But ere the bloody strife was o'er,
Upon its folds thy banner bore

A list of names of bright renown

Were fit to deck a conqueror's crown.

Attest it, Newbern; in thy woody deep

New England's heroes, crowned with laurel, sleep.
On Camden's field, that long and dreary night,
The march, the rain, the bivouac, the fight,
And all those fields now rich with sacred dust
Have felt the footsteps of the Twenty-first.

Bull Run reëchoed with thy battle call;
And dread Chantilly saw thy brave men fall;
Antietam's bloody field recalls that strife

When dark South Mountain drank brave Reno's life.
The heights of Fredericksburg recall that scene

Of death and carnage o'er her hills so green,
Till in the West Kentucky needed thee
To check the waning of her loyalty:
And round our banner firm and free,
Clung the true men of Tennessee.

They welcomed on the Bay State banner there,
With glad acclaim, that thrilled their mountain air,
Till Knoxville's siege evinced the Burnside sway,
And Longstreet stole discomfited away.

Once more the East recalled thee to her ways,
To join the comrades of thine earlier days;
Once more with them on war's sad path to go,
To end the strife with one tremendous blow.

Our leader armed and plumed with fate's decree,
To wrest the sceptre from the traitor Lee.
He stood as freedom's noble, grand bequest,
Victorious Grant, the Conqueror of the West.
"Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
Then rushed the steeds to battle driven,"
As through that wilderness of strife
Contending armies fought for life.
It was their last great effort made,
'T was hope's forlorn defeated raid.
Lessening their numbers day by day,
Closer our armies pressed that way;
North, East, and West, with threatening show
Our forces closing round the foe,

While on each Southern breeze would come
The distant roll of Sherman's drum.

Though baffled oft, yet not dismayed with doubt,
Upon that line our general fought it out,
Till Richmond felt the genius of his power,
And foul rebellion's bloody reign was o'er.

Thy work was done; thy last grand march was home;
Thy banners rest beneath the State's proud dome;
And all assembled here to-night

Recall the past, the march, the fight,

Our missing loved ones: memory aye will dwell

On those our comrades who in battle fell;

Our brothers lost; we miss them here; accounted for each one, They sleep the sleep that wakes no more; their work on earth is

done.

Oh keep the cause for which they died,

right;

your country, freedom

Embalm their memories year by year as thus you do to-night;
For 't is their monument we build on this our festive day;

"Tis our reunion with the lost, 't is our memorial lay.

As brothers we must man those walls to storm whose breach they

died.

Our flag is on the ramparts now; see it victorious ride.

Let each one pledge himself anew, and say this task is mine,

Till in yon land we form once more our regimental line.

CHAPTER VII.

JULY 6-AUGUST 16, 1862.

LEAVING NORTH CAROLINA. - ARRIVAL AT NEWPORT NEWS.NEWPORT NEWS TO FREDERICKSBURG. — FREDERICKSBURG TO THE RAPIDAN. - GENERAL POPE'S ARMY OF VIRGINIA.

WE left our last camp in North Carolina at sunrise on the 6th of July, 1862, and reëmbarked on the schooners "Scout " and "Farrington:" dropping down the Neuse, we anchored near Hatteras at midnight. On the 7th we found that our old enemy, the Swash, was still there, and worse than ever, for even our schooners made several vain attempts to get over it; finally, the men were all taken off them, going on board General Reno's boat, the "Highland Light," and they were got over at two o'clock P. M.; at half-past three we passed through the Inlet, and were towed out to sea.

After a pleasant trip in beautiful weather, we came to anchor off Fortress Monroe, at two o'clock in the afternoon of the 8th, among a crowd of vessels loaded with troops.

We remained at anchor off the fortress until late in the afternoon of the 9th, when we ran up to Newport News, and landed. As we approached the pier where we landed, we passed close to the sunken wreck of the sloop of war "Cumberland," lying in water fifty feet deep, with her masts standing out, as she had sunk on the 9th of March, the coffin of two hundred of her men, with her flag at the gaff, fighting until her guns were under water in her ever glorious conflict with the iron-clad "Merrimac." It was just six months before to a day that we had first seen the majestic war-ship at Fortress Monroe, on our arrival from Annapolis. Then she was simply mighty and grand; now her shattered wreck was a sublime

monument to the most desperate and devoted heroism of the

war.

The glory of that fight should not be left to written and oral tradition only; a massive and imperishable monument should tower high above the water where she sank, in commemoration of the noble sacrifice there offered up for country and liberty, and to teach future generations the difference in honor between a weak and puny defense like that of Fort Sumter, by Major Anderson, and the never-surrender defiant heroism of Lieutenant Morris, the commander of the "Cumberland."

"Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas,

Ye are at rest in the troubled stream.

Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,

Thy flag, that is rent in twain,

Shall be one again,

And without a seam."

H. W. LONGfellow.

Passing the first night in Newport News in some dirty barracks, on the 10th of July we pitched our tents with the rest of the army from North Carolina, on a broad plateau with a heavy wood in the rear, admirably adapted for camping purposes; and remained there throughout the month, without anything occurring of special interest. As we fell in with other officers and troops in our visits to Fort Monroe and elsewhere, we were much pleased to find in what high regard General Burnside's men were held by their brother soldiers in Virginia.

During the month, our force grew into an army of thirteen thousand hardy well-drilled veterans, by the arrival of General Parke's troops from North Carolina, and General Stevens and his gallant men from South Carolina; and we felt that we had become a power in the centre of grand operations.

On the 22d of July we were organized as the 9th Army Corps, in three divisions, under the command respectively of Generals Reno, Parke, and Stevens, the whole under command of General Burnside. Our duties at Newport News