well satisfied at the turn of events, especially those who had volunteered more for the honor attached than the good to be performed.  Others, however, were disappointed.  An old man from Laurens was indignant.  He said “the Third Regiment would never get anything.  That he had been naked and barefooted for two months, and when a chance was offered to clothe and shoe himself some d——­n fool had to countermand the order.”  Ere many days his ambition and lust for a fight were filled to overflowing.

The various grades and ranks of the Generals kept us continually moving from left to right, Generals being sometimes like a balky horse—­will not pull out of his right place.  We were stationed, as it appeared from the preparations made, permanently just in front of Richmond, or a little to the left of that place and the Williamsburg road, and began to fortify in earnest.  About the middle of June Lee and his Lieutenants were planning that great campaign whereby McClellan was to be overthrown and his army sent flying back to Washington.  Generals plan the moves of men like players their pieces upon the chess board—­a demonstration here, a feint there, now a great battle, then a reconnoissance—­without ever thinking of or considering the lives lost, the orphans made, the disconsolate widows, and broken homes that these moves make.  They talk of attacks, of pressing or crushing, of long marches, the streams or obstacles encountered, as if it were only the movement of some vast machinery, where the slipping of a cog or the breaking of a wheel will cause the machine to stop.  The General views in his mind his successes, his marches, his strategy, without ever thinking of the dead men that will mark his pathway, the victorious fields made glorious by the groans of the dying, or the blackened corpses of the dead.  The most Christian and humane soldier, however, plans his battles without ever a thought of the consequences to his faithful followers.

On the 25th of June, orders came to be prepared to move at a moment’s notice.  This left no doubt in the minds of the men that stirring times were ahead.  It had been whispered in camp that Jackson, the “ubiquitous,” was on his way from the Valley to help Lee in his work of defeating McClellan.

About 4 o’clock, on the 26th of June, as the men lay lolling around in camp, the ominous sound of a cannon was heard away to our left and rear.  Soon another and another, their dull rumbling roar telling too plainly the battle was about to begin.  Men hasten hither and thither, gathering their effects, expecting every moment to be ordered away.  Soon the roar of musketry filled the air; the regular and continual baying of the cannon beat time to the steady roll of small arms.  Jackson had come down from the Valley, and was sweeping over the country away to our left like an avalanche.  Fitz John Porter, one of the most accomplished soldiers in the Northern Army, was entrusted with the defense of the north