One morning about day break, Andrews, who had started to go to another part of the camp, came slipping back in a state of gleeful excitement.  At first I thought he either had found a tunnel or had heard some good news about exchange.  It was neither.  He opened his jacket and handed me an infantry man’s blouse, which he had found in the main street, where it had dropped out of some fellow’s bundle.  We did not make any extra exertion to find the owner.  Andrews was in sore need of clothes himself, but my necessities were so much greater that the generous fellow thought of my wants first.  We examined the garment with as much interest as ever a belle bestowed on a new dress from Worth’s.  It was in fair preservation, but the owner had cut the buttons off to trade to the guard, doubtless for a few sticks of wood, or a spoonful of salt.  We supplied the place of these with little wooden pins, and I donned the garment as a shirt and coat and vest, too, for that matter.  The best suit I ever put on never gave me a hundredth part the satisfaction that this did.  Shortly after, I managed to subdue my aversion so far as to take a good shoe which a one-legged dead man had no farther use for, and a little later a comrade gave me for the other foot a boot bottom from which he had cut the top to make a bucket.

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The day of the Presidential election of 1864 approached.  The Rebels were naturally very much interested in the result, as they believed that the election of McClellan meant compromise and cessation of hostilities, while the re-election of Lincoln meant prosecution of the War to the bitter end.  The toadying Raiders, who were perpetually hanging around the gate to get a chance to insinuate themselves into the favor of the Rebel officers, persuaded them that we were all so bitterly hostile to our Government for not exchanging us that if we were allowed to vote we would cast an overwhelming majority in favor of McClellan.

The Rebels thought that this might perhaps be used to advantage as political capital for their friends in the North.  They gave orders that we might, if we chose, hold an election on the same day of the Presidential election.  They sent in some ballot boxes, and we elected Judges of the Election.

About noon of that day Captain Bowes, and a crowd of tightbooted, broad-hatted Rebel officers, strutted in with the peculiar “Ef-yer-don’t-b’lieve—­I’m-a-butcher-jest-smell-o’-mebutes” swagger characteristic of the class.  They had come in to see us all voting for McClellan.  Instead, they found the polls surrounded with ticket pedlers shouting: 

“Walk right up here now, and get your Unconditional-Union-Abraham-Lincoln -tickets!”

“Here’s your straight-haired prosecution-of-the-war ticket.”

“Vote the Lincoln ticket; vote to whip the Rebels, and make peace with them when they’ve laid down their arms.”

“Don’t vote a McClellan ticket and gratify Rebels, everywhere,” etc.