Davies They formed the Second Brigade of the Fifth Division, under command of Colonel Dixon S. Miles, Second United States Infantry, of the Army of Northeastern Virginia, commanded by Brigadier-General Irvin McDowell, United States Army. Adjutant Howland of the Sixteenth was appointed acting assistant adjutant-general on the staff of Colonel Davies.

During our first week in Virginia the regiment furnished details for picket, and continued company and battalion drills. On the 12th, Captain Wood visited Mount Vernon, and reported the discoveries he made there to Colonel Davies, who sent out Companies C, D, and K of the Sixteenth on a reconnaissance, and reported the results of the expedition to Colonel Miles as follows:

"HEADQUARTERS SECOND BRIGADE, FIFTH DIVISION,

"ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14th, 1861.

"SIR:-In pursuance of your verbal orders of yesterday, I made a reconnaissance as far as Mount Vernon. Captain Wood was informed that a large amount of provisions were to be sent for tonight (July 14th) by some person who was to convey them and the negroes on the plantation to the Southern Army. I immediately ordered out three companies-C, D, and K of the Sixteenth regiment. On arriving at the plantation I could not find any more than sufficient in my judgment, to carry on the operations of the plantation. Whatever may be my individual views as to the confiscation of the property of rebels who are using it and its income to overthrow the government, I consider that the case was not sufficiently plain to authorize me to take the mule teams, or seize upon the fish and bacon, although their owner is well known to be an officer high in rank in the rebel army and now in active command.

"As to the negroes, there being no law or orders directing me to cause them to remain at home or to prevent them from volunteering to do team duty in my brigade, I shall allow them to remain until otherwise directed. I, however, have placed a guard

over the provisions, the mules, and the wagons, on the estate, and shall await your orders for their disposition.

"THOS. A. DAVIES,

"Colonel Commanding Second Brigade, Fifth Division."

"To COL. MILES,

"Comdg. Fifth Div. Dep't of Northeastern Virginia."

"ENDORSEMENT, July 16th, 1861.

"Colonel Davies has been instructed to immediately withdraw his pickets to within a proper distance in front of his brigade, to respect private property, and to send back to the farm the negroes his troops brought away.

"D. S. MILES,

"Colonel Second Infantry, Comdg. Fifth Division."

This endorsement indicated the decision of the authorities not to interfere with slavery or to permit the soldiers to indulge in sentimentalities respecting the freedom of the bondmen. It was impressed on the army that it was organized to suppress seceders, not to disturb the institutions of the States.

If Colonel Davies had known, when he pitched the tents of his regiment near Alexandria, that the field we occupied belonged to the farm on which Mrs. Woolsey had once lived, I have no doubt that we should have had a second "Camp Woolsey," instead of "Camp Vernon." I am permitted to copy from the "Letters of a Family during the War for the Union," printed for private distribution, extracts which will show how appropriate the name suggested would have been.

Mrs. Woolsey's daughter writes:

"Our regiment, the Sixteenth New York, was about two weeks stationed at 'Camp Woolsey,' near the Capitol, and then crossed the Potomac and pitched its tents on Cameron Run, a little west

of Alexandria, in the fields which were once the property of our great-great aunt Ricketts, whose plantation was famous for its flour, ground by the mill on the run. This aunt Ricketts, a sweetfaced woman, whose likeness was among those taken by Saint Memin about 1805, brought up your dear grand-mother (left an orphan in 1814), whose letter of July 19th speaks of those days":

...

"8 BREVOORT PLACE, Friday, July 19, 1861.

"I have just been devouring the Times-that part of it at least, and that only, which tells of the war movements,-everything else is passed over with a very slighting glance. We feel the intensest interest now in every tramp of the soldiery as they advance southward, and wait with great impatience from night till morning, and from morning till night again, for our papers.

"How deeply interesting was your letter to us, written in the doorway of J.'s tent at Alexandria-not the first tent letter we have received from you, but how different the circumstances of this last from any other! and how strange to me that poor old Alexandria, where all of my eleven brothers and sisters were born and where my father and mother and relatives lie buried, should be the scene of such warfare-the camping ground of my children under such circumstances! You must have been very near the graves of your grandparents and that of my dear venerated great-aunt, Mary Ricketts, who was a loving mother to me after the death of my own. Cameron, too, was one of the places and homes of my childhood. It was the country seat of this same good aunt, and on the grounds some distance from the dwelling house stands a dilapidated building, in its day a fine 'mansion' for that part of the country, which was the original home of the family, and where my mother was married to a then 'affluent merchant' of Alexandria.

"Cameron Run' was the scene of all our childish sports, where we used to fish and sail and bathe, and have all sorts of good times; it was then a wide deep stream and formed the boundary line along the bottom of the garden at Cameron, and was lined on either side by magnolia trees; and when the old family

coach, with its gray horses, was called up to the door on Sunday morning to take us into town for church, we each had our magnolia in hand, showing where our morning walk had been, and our side of the old church was known by its perfume. All this is as fresh in my memory as if fifty years had been but as many days! I perfectly remember every spot about the old place; but everything had changed almost entirely when I was last there, though I look back to it still as it was in my childhood. More than ever do I now regret my not having kept a diary of my early life, which might have been interesting to my children."...

The daughter adds:

"It was a pretty spot, our camp in a valley in Virginia, the hillside, covered with white tents, sloping to a green meadow and a clear bright little river. The meadow was part of my great-great-aunt's farm years ago, and in the magnolia-bordered stream my grandfather's children had fished and paddled. Now, we, two generations afterwards, had come back and pitched our tents in the old wheat field, and made ready for war, and there were no magnolia blossoms any more." . . . "Our regiment had only been encamped a few days on Cameron Run when the advance against the enemy at Manassas was ordered, and we two (G. and E.) watched the brigade break camp and march down the peaceful country road, carrying J. away from us. We stood alone, and looked after them as long as they were in sight, and then made our way back to Washington."

CHAPTER IV

AT

"ON TO RICHMOND"

T 3 P.M. July 16, 1861, the Sixteenth New York, with forty rounds of ammunition and three days' cooked rations, formed in line on the Alexandria and Fairfax Pike, and marched, with the regiments of the Second Brigade, Fifth Division, to Annandale, and encamped for the night. At daybreak the advance was resumed on the old Braddock road, marching until 8.30 A.M., when we found obstruction but no enemy. At 11 A.M., we met the first Confederate pickets with whom we exchanged shots, but no casualties resulted until we came on the main force, upon which their outposts had fallen back, about three miles from Fairfax Court House, where a brisk skirmish took place between the enemy and our picket line; the casualties on our side were the mortal wounding of Sergeant John S. Allen, Company K, Eighteenth New York, who was the first Northern New Yorker to fall in the Civil War, and the slight wounding of a private of the same regiment. Resuming our march, we came to the recently abandoned camp of the Fifth Alabama Rifles wherein were found a well prepared dinner, caddies of tea, barrels of sugar, and many articles better suited for a picnic or a party in a summer house than to soldiers in the field. We envied the bountifully supplied Southerners then, but the time came when we were often glad to give a hungry "Johnnie" a taste of our bread and bacon. Learning that McDowell's troops occupied Fair