Charles D. Jones, in very happy manner presented the golden tokens of both organizations.

The other presents were numerous and beautiful.

November 8, 1847, Colonel Carver was married to Mary C. Willis, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Willis of Thomaston.

AN INTERESTING INCIDENT.

On Saturday, the day of General Neal Dow's death, a letter was received addressed to him from Colonel T. G. Reid of the Twelfth Arkansas Infantry Regiment, C. S. A., under date of September 29, in which he

says:

The morning papers through the Associated Press despatches tell us that you are seriously sick. I have always felt I would like to know you personally. On the morning of the assault on Port Hudson, you with one or two mounted officers in the midst of your brigade, columns of regimental front, in the broad open field of Slaughter's plantation were directing the deploying of your regiments into line of battle about four to six hundred yards from my position, which was the right center of our line of earthworks in front of Slaughter's residence. I observed closely your movements until I was enabled to know that you were the commanding officer.

I assembled a small number of my sharpshooters, and singled you out to them, and ordered them to fire

continously at you. After a short time your line of battle was formed. and a general advance on my position was commenced, with drums beating

and flags flying, presenting a magnificent line, grandly marching to time in perfect order. It was a picture never to be erased from my mind, for with all the military pomp and display in formidable battle array, I knew the dreadful fate I held in hand to turn it into defeat with the terrible slaughter of that day's battle.

The scattering fire of my sharpshooters continued while the roar of your cannon sent shells over our heads. When about three hundred yards from my position I saw you fall or lean down to your horse's neck, and a number of your hospital corps ran and lifted you from your horse. (At this point General Dow had been struck in the shoulder by a shot, and, unable to control his horse, was obliged to dismount and proceed on foot, when he was afterwards shot through the thigh).

Your command never faltered, but swept on in splendid line until within eighty yards of my position, when I ordered my battalion to fire. You directed the charge of your brigade, and it swept along like an avalanche until forced to retreat from the galling fire of my command so well protected by our strong breast works. But the retreat of your brigade was orderly.

THE DAY AFTER THE BATTLE OF CEDAR MOUNTAIN.

Frank J. Bradbury of Norway, late of Company G, Tenth Maine Infantry, writes:

The artillery battle of the day had ceased by the rout of the Confederates, and all was quiet but the moving of the batteries to take new positions as it seemed. After a rest

less, nervous night, Sunday morning, the 10th day of August, 1862, dawned; the birds sung in the trees their sweetest songs of peace, where yesterday men of the North and South were contending in deadly conflict. I ventured out of the woods into a grass field to reconnoitre, and when near a stack of hay, a battery, which I learned belonged to General Sigel's division, sent a few shells over us into the enemy's lines but received no response. Two or three soldiers of the Second Massachusetts Regiment, General Gordon's brigade, who were in the fight with us, now crawled out from under the hay stack, somewhat bewildered. They had laid still during the cannonading in the night and held their peace, but now thought their fort was to be bombarded.

At this time the Confederate pickets opened fire upon us, the shots striking all around and uncomfortably near, and we quickly scattered for shelter. I lay down in a little thicket a few rods ahead in the field to escape the bullets, and after awhile fell into a troubled sleep, and being so fatigued lay dozing a long time. I was fully awakened by what I thought might be a renewal of the battle by cannonading. I cautiously crept from my hiding place, and saw a black cloud approaching from the west and the distant rumbling of heaven's artillery. With hunger and pain I made my way toward our lines, my leg having become stiff and swollen. On ascending quite a long, sharp rise of ground due east and over the brow of this hill, I entered a long line of General Sigel's artillery, who had come from the rear the

night previous and taken position here, the men standing to arms amid the lightning and thunder of the almighty power of Jehovah.

General Banks's army, overpowered by an overwhelming force of Stonewall Jackson's southern troops, had retired to the rear. In a deluge of rain I passed to the rear of General Sigel's brave artillerymen, and halting for a moment where the surgeons were hard at work amputating limbs and dressing bloody wounds of the stricken soldiers, and perhaps a mile further on toward Culpeper in a field a few rods from the road close to a forrest, cooking their scanty supper, I joined the heroes left of the battle. Here I was glad to find the headquarters of the gallant old Tenth

Maine.

CAN ANY COMRADES OF COMPANY M, FIRST D. C. CAVALRY HELP?

J. W. Fletcher of Richmond, Kansas, late of Company H, First Maine Cavalry, and Company M, First D. C. Cavalry, writes:

In looking over the roster of the First Maine Cavalry, I find the address of E. P. Merrill, and if I am not mistaken you were the first lieutenant of Company M, First D. C. Cavalry. If you will look back some thirty-three years the 16th of September, and see what was left of Company M, on a dead run for Sycamore church, and some few hundred yards in the rear a poor little cuss on your pack mule trying to keep up. you will remember yours truly J. W. Fletcher. Do you remember how said mule fell and threw me some fifty feet more or less, and how you

rode back in the face of a storm of bullets and, as the mule was dragging me, helped me on the saddle? I do, as though it had been yesterday; and how, after the fun was over and we were on the march to hell, you said if you had been on your death bed you would have laughed to see me go over that mule's head. Well, I have often wondered how long you were in prison; somehow I took a great liking to you as a man and officer, and often wondered before I saw your name in roster if you lived to get

out.

October 17. Since writing the above have been on the sick-list; that is worse than usual, as I have not seen a well day for years; cause, nine months in Libby, Danville, and Salisbury. If you remember after three or four weeks we left Libby for Danville, were about the same length of time there, and then the same old story as at Libby, "Fall in for an exchange;" then after two or three days and nights on box cars without anything to eat we were unloaded at Salisbury prison. Then the boys gave up and commenced to die. I saw them go one after another, until I made my escape when there were only three or four left. The last one I saw die was my chum Joseph Randall Sampson, Ran we called him; he died with his head in my lap, starved to death. I got away shortly after, sometime in March I think. I was so near gone myself that I cannot remember dates. I only know we were on the march going south and I got away. I heard afterwards that some of our Cavalry were on the way to liberate us, and for safety they were

taking us further south. Well, as luck would have it, I stopped at a house to get something to eat. (I knew it was risky, but a person will take all kinds of risks when starving). The woman, God bless her, was true blue. I was a stranger and she took me in, and I stayed there some three weeks, living on the best she and some of her neighbors had. Of course I gained some in strength.

Well, one Sunday night I started for our lines some 225 miles across the Blue Ridge; after some three or four weeks I reached it. Of course I could write a week telling you what I went through. Stole a horse for one thing, was overtaken by the owner, left the horse and took to timber; then while he was trying to catch my horse, he left the one he had ridden hitched to the limb of a tree (a fine stallion). I mounted that one and had made a good start when he fired at me and hit the horse. I took to timber again, got in a swamp and got away. was one out of many scrapes I was in. I struck our lines at Jonesburg, East Tennessee.

That

Do you remember Captain Benson? I have forgotten the company. He was captured at Roanoke Bridge in June '64, Wilson raid. Well, when I was making for our lines I stopped two or three days with a family near Taylorsville, N. C., and they said some time that winter a Captain Benson of First D. C. Cavalry stopped with them a couple of days; he was making his escape from Andersonville. About sixteen years ago I was in business on Washington street, Boston, and Captain Benson was on Tremont street. I passed his place of

business every day for months but was not aware of it—such is life.

Now, how about pensions,-do you get one? I am getting six dollars per month; have tried time and again for an increase, but can't get it. Some eight years ago I was paralyzed in right arm and could not do a thing in the way of labor two years or more ; am better now as to that, but all run down in health, and always expect to be. Have a family of four to support and nothing but my earnings to depend on. I cannot understand this pension business. There are rich men in this town, in perfect health, getting from $17 to $24 per month, and never saw a rebel. I have a claim for increase pending now, but have no hopes. If I had my health I would not ask for pension, although I starved, froze, and was eaten by vermin for months. The last of my prison life in Salisbury they fed us on raw tripe. just as it came from the slaughter house, and we had no way to clean or cook it. They would bring the tripe upon the stage and throw them to us a whole one at a time, and we

would fight over them like a pack of wolves, and the stage all around the stockade would be crowded with men, women, and children watching the yanks fight over the nasty stuff which a hungry dog would turn from. "O ye gods and little fishes!" talk about the gray and the blue! and the blue! I only wish

I could write as some can.

Do you remember Lieut. Mountfort of Company K? I remember one night he came to our campfire and told us about being a prisoner, and he said, "Boys, never surrender, I will die before I do it." Of course

tree.

we said talk is cheap, but we did not know our man then. I was not twenty feet from Mountfort when he was ordered to throw up his hands. I saw him drop two men from the saddle with his navy, then threw it and drew his saber, then he fell shot. dead, fell in the top of a down tree, head to the ground and feet in the air supported by the branches of the Half an hour after when on the march I passed the tree again, and he was in the same position. He is noted without doubt as a brave man, and so he was, but there were hundreds of others there that morning just as brave, only they had not been in southern prisons. If you know the address of any of Company M boys that were in prison with me, I wish you would let me know, also write about your own experience, and greatly oblige.

NOTE. Captain Benson has given his narrative of prison life and escape, Call 11 of 1893 BUGLE, page 3-11. Comrade Fletcher and Lieut. Merrill have been asked to give an account of their experiences in prison. The Parker, Erastus Doble, and other narratives of Captain Benson, M. M. comrades, have been presented in the BUGLE, and have won many encomiums for value and interest.

YOUR HISTORY A MOST EXCELLENT ONE.

Lieutenant George K. Collins, of Syracuse, N. Y., late of the One Hundred and Forty-ninth New York Infantry, writes:

Yours with book at hand. I am already disappointed. It is the first time I won the best of an exchange. Your history is a most excellent one

and worthy of the regiment; in fact, it is the best of any I have seen, and I have seen many. I am very glad to get your picture and that of the auWhen I go in the army again, I intend to go in the Cavalry, they seem to get a larger per cent of the good fellows; I like their dash and style, it shows itself even in their history. I send you herewith a copy of our history, and I wish to say that as far as possible it was intended to be original, even to illustrations. All the initial cuts are from pen sketches and engravings, made by the boys themselves. Of course our history was a private enterprise and I can assure you it was expensive enough, although not up to yours. We have a few very rich men in our command, but these are not the men for an enterprise like this,-the poor are not called upon, and were not in this instance. I trust you will find our history, however, worthy of a most excellent regiment, and one of great gallantry on the field of battle. If our story as told in this history is as interesting to you as yours is to me, I shall be pleased.

66

My regiment did not participate in thirty-six battles, yet we had enough of it, and Fox has seen fit to include us among the Fighting Three Hundred." Our losses from all sources during the war were over six hundred and our experience was a varied one. One year in the Army of the Potomac; and the balance in the Army of the Cumberland; the Command was with Sherman from Atlanta to the Sea; but we saw no thirty-six battles to recommend our history to you. The state of New York is now erect

ing

monuments at Wauhatchie, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, and Ringgold, (the inscriptions. now lie before me for correction, etc.) to perpetuate the memory of our service at those places. She has placed a similar monument on Culps Hill, Gettysburg, for our benefit, but she could not say as much for us as is said for the First Maine Cavalry. Mortimer B. Birdseye of the Second New York (Harris Light) Cavalry entered the service as orderly of my company. You may know him. I remember very well of hearing the guns fired at Aldie when your Colonel Douty was killed.

FRESH AND INTERESTING.

E. W. Schutte, 322 East 119th St., New York City, writes:

I find the contents of the BUGLE ever fresh and always interesting to me, as a veteran of the good old Army of the Potomac.

NOTHING BUT BUTTERMILK LEFT.

Jno. D. Vautier, 731 Federal street, Philadelphia, Pa., writes:

The old First Maine came to hand all right (except that it got wet in transit and the covers and some leaves were water stained, but never mind, the reading is all there) and I am very much pleased with it. I have read the third and fourth chapters, where we marched and fought together, and the old times were all recalled. You have quite an ambi tious book, and your roster is very complete, while your cuts are firstclass. I think I shall like your narrative very much.