I told this story in an after-dinner speech at a banquet some time ago to a company of twenty-nine female doctors of medicine--trained, and practicing physicians. They made no protest; listened with unbroken gravity; accepted it as a narrative of actual occurrence, and looked at me with wide-eyed interest. When I finished I thought it best to tell them that it was all a joke. Then they laughed themselves into a fit.
Well, this little account of our doings, and our life in the winter camp at Morton's Ford--1863-1864--is done. Out of its duties, and companionships; its pleasures, and its deeper experiences, we Howitzers were laying up pleasant memories of the camp for the years to come. And often in after years, when some of us comrades got together we would speak of the old camp at Morton's Ford.
The spring was now coming on. We knew that our stay here could not last much longer. How, and when, and where we should go from here, we did not know. We knew we would go somewhere--that was all. "We would know when the time came, and 'Marse Robert' wanted us" he would tell us.
That is the soldier's life--"Go, and he goeth; come, and he cometh; do this, and he doeth it." No choice. Wait for orders--then, quick! Go to it!
Well we were perfectly willing to trust "Marse Robert" and perfectly ready to do just what he said. Meantime we take no anxious thought for the morrow; we go on with our work, and our play--we are "prepared to move at a moment's warning."
Nineteen miles from Orange Court House, Virginia, the road running northeast into Culpeper crosses "Morton's Ford" of the Rapidan River, which, just now, lay between the Federal "Army of the Potomac" and the Confederate "Army of Northern Virginia."
As this road approaches within three-fourths of a mile of the river it rises over a sharp hill, and, thence, winds its way down the hill to the Ford. On the ridge, just where the road crosses it, the guns of the "First Richmond Howitzers" were in position, commanding the Ford; and the Howitzer Camp was to the right of the road, in the pine wood just back of the ridge. Here, we had been on picket all the winter, helping the infantry pickets to watch the enemy and guard the Ford.
One bright sunny morning, the 2d of May, 1864, a courier rode into the Howitzer Camp. We had been expecting him, and knew at once that "something was up." The soldier instinct and long experience told us that it was about time for something to turn up. The long winter had worn away; the sun and winds, of March and April, had made the roads firm again. Just across the river lay the great army, which was only waiting for this, to make another desperate push for Richmond, and we were there for the particular purpose of making that push vain.