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soldiers who had been doing garrison duty at Washington, and ordered to join General Grant. We were meeting each other for some hours and they guyed us all along. I recollect one said, ' Hello, Johnnies. We are taking you North to give you something to eat and put some shoes on your feet.' Some of us needed shoes. In fact, we were hatless, shoeless, and coatless. We were taken to Point Lookout, Md., and after three months transferred to Elmira. Major H. G. O. Weymouth, of the Seventeenth Massachusetts, was commandant of Point Lookout. I had a pleasant chat with him yesterday in Boston. He was kind and considerate, and allowed the Masons to make an appeal to the Baltimore fraternity for cloth- ing. We had 1,200 negro guards at Point Lookout, but white troops at Elmira.

" I desire to express my thanks to the members of Baldwin Post for their attention to our graves, and the honors they showed our dead Decoration-Day. Also for the pleasant call from Post-Com- mander M. M. Conklin, Van Wagoner, and Brother Winfield S. Moody. I wish to say in conclusion, that while we ex-Confederates repudiated the suggestion as to pensions from the National Govern- ment, yet we applauded President McKinley's utterance at Atlanta in reference to the Confederate graves. We feel that when the time comes Baldwin Post, Elmira, N. Y., will do all in their power to help mark in marble the names of our beloved dead.

" MARCUS B. TONEY.

"New York, August 14, 1901"

[From the Richmond, Va., Dispatch, October 13, 1901.]

BATTLE OF BETHEL.

First Engagement of the War Between the States.

BARELY MENTIONED IN HISTORY.

Of Sufficient Importance to be Recorded on Its Pages -Men Engaged in it on Both Sides Who Afterwards Became Famous.

Forty years ago the tenth of last June, the first battle of the Civil War was fought at Bethel Church, Va., between the Federal forces of General B. F. Butler (with General Pierce in immediate command) and the Confederates under General John B. Magruder. Though