Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/239

 for provisions the men often picked up furnishings for their temporary homes, and where they remained several months, they had a way of making their “shebangs” quite comfortable. Some of them became ornamented with luxuries not altogether appropriate to camp life, but the boys were not discerning as to harmony and artistic effects. While at Pulaski, orders were received allowing the men, who had been two years in the service, to reënlist, thus becoming veterans, with the privilege of a month’s furlough. Three-fourths of the men in the service, fit for duty, reënlisted, and on the 20th of January, 1864, they started for Iowa. After a month at home, where every honor was bestowed upon them, they assembled at Keokuk and returned to the army on the 27th of April the Seventh started with Sherman’s army on the Atlanta campaign. In the march through Georgia and the Carolinas the regiment participated in the numerous skirmishes and battles which marked the progress of the army, always doing its duty bravely, and winning honor in every conflict. At the crossing of the Ostanaula River on the 15th of May, Colonel Rice, in command of a brigade, led the advance of the Army of the Tennessee. The day before he had made a demonstration at a point higher up the stream. Early on the morning of the 15th he rapidly threw his brigade across Lay’s Ferry by means of a flat boat and pontoons. To engage the attention of the enemy he had first sent a detachment of sharp-shooters over on the flat boats, which, under cover of a heavy artillery fire, supported by the Sixty-sixth Indiana, drove the Confederates from their rifle pits, while the main body crossed. Hastily throwing up defense beyond view of the enemy, he awaited the crossing of the Third Brigade, which took position on his left. General Walker, with a whole division, now confronted the three brigades. The Seventh Iowa, Major McMullen commanding, supported by an Indiana