Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/120

 112 Southern Historical Society Papers.

ority had an interest in the sutler's store, and for that reason signa- tures were not too closely scrutinized. Thir* may not have been true; but that a wonderful number of men purchased liquor on forged orders is a fact.

After a month or more spent between the banks of Beaver creek and the river Tangipahoa orders came to proceed to Camp Chalmette, below New Orleans. Officers and men alike had been anxiously ex- pecting orders to proceed to Virginia, and were greatly disappointed at change of destination, but as any change was desirable, marching orders were hailed with intense satisfaction.

Soon after receipt of orders a reign of busy activity began. Tents were taken down, trunks packed, blankets rolled and the regiment aligned along the railroad track to await the train. Every officer had one trunk at least at Camp Moore, but a day came when all one's surplus clothing was rolled in a blanket to be slung and carried over the shoulder. Trunks shrunk to valises, valises to hand grips and hand grips to nothing, in a remarkably short time.

The train to carry the regiment and its belongings came snorting along about 3 o'clock in the morning, and as soon as filled with men and camp equipage was off for the Crescent City. Without regret, we bade farewell to the old camp in the pines, with its six or seven hundred graves, containing the remains of Louisianians who yielded up their patriotic young lives without having once faced the enemies of their beloved South. Not one single mound, however, was erected over the body of a member of the I3th, a fact which gives emphasis to the remark I often heard, that soldiers from urban com- munities withstand disease and hardships far better than those raised in the country, where regular hours are maintained and diseases usual to congested communities unknown. To measles may be largely charged the loss of life at Camp Moore, and as this disease is generally contracted in childhood by inhabitants in cities and towns, and as a great majority of our men were city bred, the I3th was as nearly immune as a regiment could well be.

After a few hours' travel, the train pulled into the old Jackson Railroad Depot, where an unusually animated scene presented itself. The surroundings were black with a dense mass of humanity. It was a bright Sunday morning, and fathers, mothers, brothers, sis- ters, sweethearts, and throngs of persons drawn hither by simple curiosity, or it may be, moved by patriotic impulses, arrayed in hol- iday garb, packed the depot until it was well-nigh impossible to alight from the cars or to form companies.