There was not much of general interest in this encampment, but it was made extremely lively. Some days we were ordered into a line for a fight in the morning, some days in the afternoon, some days in the night. Whenever the order came we got into line, with all our earthly treasures packed upon our backs, and sometimes we stood in line for an hour, only to learn that we were simply to move the position of our camp.

June 5^th. Truman Judd, of Bethel, visited our company to learn of the fate of the Bethel members.

An order was issued making the following promotions. Generally the orders read to the regiment on parade were not of any interest unless they pertained to a move, but this order was particularly listened to. It read as follows:

First Lieutenant McQuade, of Company A, is promoted to be captain of that company; Second Lieutenant Craw is promoted to first lieutenant; Sergeant Ells is promoted to be second lieutenant; Lieutenant French is promoted to be captain of Company G; Second Lieutenant Dennis to be first lieutenant, and First Sergeant D. Bartram to be second lieutenant; Adjutant Hubbell is promoted to be captain of Company D, Sergeant Major Chatfield to be adjutant, and Corporal Betts, of Company A, to be sergeant-major.

At 11 o'clock of the morning of June 8^th we received orders to pack up everything but our tents and be in readiness at any moment to march. We were ordered to have three days' cooked rations in our knapsacks. Heavy cannonading was heard in the direction of Fredericksburg and we thought sure we were in for another fight. June 6^th the notable event was an order from General Barlow, directing every man to go to the brook and wash himself, and change his underclothing. The weather was very warm and the earth very dry during this time.

June 10^th orders were read on parade giving the findings of a court martial in the cases of Captain McCarthy (McCarty), of Company K, and Lieutenant Meade, of Company I, who greatly exceeded a leave of absence they had been given.

June 12^th it was reported that the first, second and fifth corps were moving. At 1 p.m. our corps started. We kept for the distance of three miles the road we passed over when starting out for Chancellorsville, then we turned to the right and prusued a westerly course until dark. We stoppped for the night at Hartwood Church, having gone a distance of twelve or fifteen miles. The day was very warm.

June 13^th we resumed our march at 4 a.m. We struck the Warrenton turnpike, our destination being Catlett's Station. This place was reached at 5 p.m., after an afternoon of rapid marching. The day was an excessively warm one, and the dust blew in clouds. A large number of men were obliged to fall out through exhaustion, and two men of the 107^th Ohio, in our brigade, died on the way.

The next day, Sunday, the 14^th, we marched to Manassas, a distance of fifteen miles.

June 15^th. We were called up at 3 o'clock this morning to draw rations and prepare for moving, but we did not leave until 6 o'clock. We marched to Centreville, six miles, where we halted for the day. Troops passed us all day.

June 16^th. This morning at an early hour we resumed the march, and kept it up all day, bringing up at night at what is called Goose Creek. This was thirty-four miles from Centreville. The heat was intense, the dust unbearable. Much of the march was along a road shut in by pine brush which kept off all air. Our camp at Goose Creek was about four miles from Leesburg. The creek itself was liberally patronized by the foot-sore, dust-ladened, weary soldiers.

I was among those detailed for guard, and I was stationed at division headquarters. The beat was long and full of stone, and as my feet were very sore I did not walk it, but stood still. Shortly Mrs. Barlow, wife of the division general, told an orderly to tell me to walk my beat and stop looking at her, or I would be arrested. I walked.

We remained at Goose Creek until the 24^th instant, when we marched in the afternoon of that day to Edward's Ferry on the Potomac. Here we remained for the night.

At 5 a.m. the next morning, June 25^th, we crossed the Ferry on a pontoon bridge. We also crossed a canal running parallel with the river. In the canal was a boat bearing the name, "Flying Cloud", of Georgetown. We marched in sight of the river nearly all day, crossing at one time the Baltimore and Ohio railway. At 11 a.m. we crossed Monocacy creek. Close by the bridge was a liquor saloon and here a number supplied their canteens with a foreign substance. A number of drinks and a few fights were the result.

At 1 o'clock we stopped an hour or more for dinner. The place was at the side of a brook. Here we bathed and got water for our canteens and for coffee, bathing and drinking at the same time. At night we halted in a clover field, within two miles of the village of Jefferson.

We have passed today through one of the most fertile sections of Maryland, by fields of grain and through flourishing villages.

June 26. We began our march this day at 9 a.m., passing through Jefferson and going on to Middletown.

No roll call this morning, and being very tired we slept late. There were a number of farm houses near by, and at these the boys bought bread, pies and milk. The latter sold for fifteen cents a canteen full. Early in the afternoon of the 28^th we took up our line of march and proceeded to Frederickstown, a distance of twelve miles, where we were obliged to halt for the night, as the town was so full of troops that we could not get through. It is reported that Dr, Hubbard has been appointed medical director of our corps.

June 29^th. We were aroused at 3 a.m. for roll call, and began our day's march at five o'clock with one day's ration of fresh meat. The weather was hot with frequent showers to make mud and wet us through. We made twenty-two miles by night, reaching Emmittsburg, Pa[Md.]., at six o'clock.

The Record of a Yankee Regiment

IN THE WAR FOR THE UNION

At 7 o'clock the next morning, July 1, we were ordered into line, the objective point being Gettysburg, five or six miles distant. Lieutenant C.E. Doty, of Company F, was an aide on the staff of General Ames, commander of our brigade. He contributes a bit of interesting history leading up to the Gettysburg movement, and his account of the battle is valuable, from his position on the staff, and from the fact that all orders communicated to our regiment during the fight were sent by him. His report of the movement of the two armies to Pennsylvania, and of our brigade's participation in the great battle is substantially as follows:

After the battle of Chancellorsville our Army of the Potomac remained comparatively quiet until June, which gave our boys a chance to recuperate and prepare for what was to come.

The anxiety of General Hooker, to gain information of the movements of the enemy finally induced him to order a cavalry reconnaissance in force on the 9^th of June. A few days previous to that he sent an aide to General Adelbert Ames, our brigade commander, requesting an immediate interview, who summoning Captain Brown, his adjutant general, and Lieutenant C.E. Doty, aide de camp, to accompany him, he at once reported to army headquarters.

The plans were then laid for a secret expedition in which the infantry were to support the cavalry and artillery in an attack upon the rebel General Stuart, and at 5 o'clock, on the night of the 5^th of June, Lieutenant Doty, who was a lieutenant in Company F, Seventeenth regiment, came over from brigade headquarters and hurriedly bidding the boys goodbye, gave us the first intimation that something was up, and we were soon to be on the move. And sure enough in a few days we were busy packing up and received orders to move at once, our General Ames having gone in command of the infantry comprising 500 men from each of the following corps, Fifth, Sixth, Second and Third, on the secret expedition, which resulted in the battle of Beverly Ford. A Colonel Brown from Indiana was sent to temporarily command the brigade. Then the race began. The rebel army on one side of the Blue Ridge mountains in Shenandoah valley, and our army the other, trying to frustrate the other's move. On the 15ht of June Gen. Ames having returned from his expedition accompained by Lieut. Doty, assumed command of the brigade. We were now going north towards home and our boys naturally were very much interested to know where the battle was to be fought. When we crossed the Potomac and entered Maryland our anxiety was increased; at Emmittsburg we learned it would be Gettysburg or Harrisburg. Early on the morning of the 1^st of July we were on the move with orders to march as rapidly as possible to Gettysburg, and when within the a few miles we heard the guns which told us the strife had already begun. At nine o'clock on the morning of the 1^st of July we passed from the Emmittsburg pike to Cemetery Hill and while on the hill could plainly see the first army corps in line of battle. It was here the news was brought to us that General Reynolds, the corps commander, was killed, and that the eleventh corps was to deploy at once on the right of the first. Passing through the city we were halted and passed into a grain field just beyond the poor house on the outskirts of the city. It was here that the seventeenth was called upon to furnish a small detachment to guard a wooden bridge which the rebels were trying to destroy. By orders from General Ames, Lieut. Doty of his staff, requested from Colonel Fowler one or two of his companies for this duty.

Knowing his officers would all be glad to go, and not desiring to discriminate, Colonel Fowler called for companies to volunteer. Colonel Henry Allen, then in command of Company F, at once stepped forward, and saluting, said: "Colonel Fowler, Company F is ready." Soon after, Captain John McQuade and Lieutenant Ells, of Company A, did the same, and they were joined by Captain McCarty, Company K, and were soon deployed in line, and at the right of the road down to and near a small stream of water, the left of their line beginning at the bridge. The other seven companies under Colonel Fowler went with the brigade into a grain field at the left of the road, and were formed in double column, and halted just inside of the rail fence, a short distance from where their monument now stands. In the rear, the 107^th Ohio were held in reserve, while the Seventy-fifth Ohio and the Fifty-fifth Ohio were advanced in line of battle to meet the enemy, who were now rushing into the fight very rapidly, and were pouring into us a terrible enfilading fire of musketry. About this time a battery upon the left of the brigade, having been ordered back upon Cemetery Hill, left an opening which General Ames was fearful the Johnnies might take advantage of to break through the line, and at once despatched Lieutenant Doty, of his staff, to take the 107^th Ohio, in command of Colonel Meyers, to fill the gap; and am sorry to say Colonel Meyers, who was a professor of some college in Ohio before the war, was so cowardly that General Ames, losing his patience, after repeated reports from his staff officer of his inability to move him, at once instructed Lieutenant Doty to place the colonel under arrest and to take the next office in rank and place him in command, which he did, and soon had the 107^th on a double quick into line. This staff officer retiring to where the general stood was soon sent to Colonel Fowler, of the Seventeenth Connecticut, with instructions to move the regiment at once to the front to relieve the Seventy-fifth Ohio, and allow them to pass quickly through their ranks.

How well the writer remembers as he remained to see many of them for the last time.

Colonel Fowler at once rode to the front and gave the command to deploy column, and swinging his sword, said:

"Now, Seventeenth, do your duty! Forward, double quick! Charge bayonets!" and with a yell, which our boys knew how to give, they charged.

They fought and were mowed down in fearful numbers. Colonel Fowler soon fell, struck by a shell in the forehead, which scattered his brains all over the arm of Adjutant Chatfield, who was by his side. Captain Moore and many others were soon killed.

The old Seventeenth were suffering terribly, General Ames seeing that it was impossible to longer hold the overwhelming force in front of him in check, called in three companies guarding the bridge, and Lieutenant Doty, of Company F, being sent by the general to recall them, had to run a gauntlet of fire to get to them, but Lieutenant Ells, of Company A, seeing him approaching, came to meet him, andhe passed the word down the line, and our brigade, what was left of them, was soon rapidly passing back through Gettysburg to Cemetery Hill, and were deployed just inside a stone fence east of the gateway. Behind us, a little higher up, was DuBeck's New York battery. The Eleventh Corps was now occupying the centre of the line which was in shape of the inverted U. Occupying this new position, closed the first day's fight, July 1^st.

The next morning, by daylight, the fighting again began. All along the line the whole day was occupied in meeting and repulsing, as we were on the defensive, and our position one in which we had confidence, but at sundown of the 2^nd of July a beautiful charge was made directly upon one part of the line and the Seventeenth Connecticut had the experience of fighting hand to hand. Captain Burr, of Company E, capturing a Johnny all alone, but although compelled to fall back, our regiment did so stubbornly, and not until nine o'clock in the evening did the fighting cease, and at roll call that night our numbers were so small that we were but a good size company.

On the third day the heaviest cannonading that any army ever experienced we received, and the day was a repetition of the second. John Metcalf, of Company F, was killed while on the skirmish line, near the cemetery entrance. He was lying on his stomach behind a board fence, the bottom board only about twelve inches high. He raised his head to look down the street and was shot by a sharpshooter in the head and buried where he lay.

The 4^th of July was quiet and we soon learned the rebel army was moving away from our front. The great battle of the war had been fought and the old Seventeenth Connecticut, although leaving Connecticut with over 1,000 men, now numbered but a handful of men, and we were not able nor given a chance to go over the field where the first day's fight began as thoroughly as we should have liked, but this much we did find that Captain James E. Moore, of Company C, was an exceptional case, where, owing no doubt to his having been a masonic man, was decently buried. A piece a cracker box lid was used as a head-stone and his name, rank and regiment marked upon it plainly in lead pencil. Colonel Fowler and many others, undoubtedly, were stripped of all but underclothing by the rebels and thrown into a ditch, ten or twelve at a time and covered over, at least that is the way they were found, so it was impossible to recognize them.

All day of the 1^st of July the fighting was done by the First and Eleventh army corps, and as a consequence our regiment was continuously in action for three days, day and night. The attack and charge by General Pickett, in whose command were the Louisiana Tigers, our boys will not soon forget. Having met one member of that famous southern regiment since the war, he told me that in all his fighting they never had met their match until the Tigers struck against the Seventeenth Connecticut in their charge to capture that battery, and he believed that if it had not been for their holding them back they would have captured the entire battery, and undoubtedly secured a hold upon the hill.

Our boys used to say that the Tigers used long knives for toothpicks and had them in their boots; but this member whom we met laughed heartily when informed of our opinion of them. However, they were fine fellows, and worthy of our steel.

For some reason which we never knew Lee's army was allowed to cross the Potomac, and while pushing him at Williamsport, and throwing out a line of pickets, the writer, who had charge of the brigade picket line, was placing them in a field, when a young girl about eighteen years of age came out of a house nearby, swinging a flag in one hand and a sun bonnet in the other, begged of me to allow her to go down with me to see those dear good Union soldiers, and she accompanied him across a grain field, part of the way on their hands and knees, being in full view of the rebels, and she remained there on the line the whole day, and was as plucky a girl as one could wish to see.