CHAPTER XXI
With Burnside before Fredericksburg.—1862
HAVING, after a good deal of effort, received
permission to proceed to the front, I secured an order
for transportation on one of the Government boats from
Quartermaster-General Meigs. I managed to get myself
and belongings, including my horse, on one of the many
craft loading with army supplies, on the morning of November
29. We steamed off in the afternoon, but, Acquia Creek
being sixty-five miles from Washington, and the boat
making only six and seven miles an hour, we did not reach
our destination before midnight. The captain let me share
his supper, but there were sleeping accommodations only
for the officers and crew, so that I was obliged to seek rest
on the floor of the small mess-room. I was up at daybreak.
In the estuary were several score of vessels at anchor —
gunboats, steamboats of all kinds, schooners, scows, barges, and
canal-boats — all awaiting their turn to discharge at the one
available wharf. It looked as if I might have to wait for
days before I could get my horse ashore. The captain was
rowed to the landing early, and I accompanied him to
ascertain the prospect before me. Fortunately, we had some
railroad material aboard that was urgently needed in
repairing the section between Acquia and Falmouth of the
road from Alexandria to Fredericksburg, which had been
utterly destroyed at an earlier stage of the war, and we were
made fast to the wharf by noon and my luggage and animal
safely transferred to it shortly afterward.
The railroad was near the wharf, and a locomotive and an old passenger coach and a dozen freight cars stood upon
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