The fifty-fifth were now preparing to embark for that home which they regarded with enthusiasm; this extended to the lowest ranks, who were absolutely home-sick. They had, too, from the highest to the lowest, been enabled, from their unexpensive mode of living, to lay up some money. Never was there a body of men more uncorrupted and more attached to each other. Military men contract a love of variety in their wandering manner of life, and always imagine they are to find some enjoyment in the next quarters that they have not had in this; so that the order for march is generally a joyful summons to the younger officers at least. To these novices, who, when they thought the world of variety, glory, and preferment was open before them, were ordered up into the depth of unexplored forests, to be kept stationary for years together, without even the amusement of a battle, it was sufficiently disappointing. Yet afterwards I have been told that, in all the changes to which this hapless regiment was subjected, they looked back on the years spent on the lakes as the happiest of their lives.
My father parted with them with extreme regret, but he had passed the rubicon—that is to say, taken out his patent, and stay he must. He went, however, to New-York with them, and here a very unexpected scene opened. Many of the soldiers who had saved little sums, had deposited them in my father’s hands, and, when he gave every one his own at New-York, he had great pleasure in seeing their exultation, and the purchases they were making. When, all of a sudden, a thunderbolt burst among these poor fellows, in the shape of an order to draft the greatest part of them to Pensacola, to renew regiments who, placed on a bar of burning sand, with a salt marsh before and a swamp behind, were lingering out a wretched and precarious existence, daily cut short by disease in some new instance. Words are very inadequate to give an idea of the horror that pervaded this band of veterans. When this order was most unexpectedly read at the head of the regiment, it was worse to most of them than a sentence of immediate death. They were going to a dismal and detested quarter, and they were going to become part of a regiment of no repute; whom they themselves had held in the utmost contempt when they had formerly served together. The officers were not a little affected by this cruel order; to part with brave well-disciplined men, who, by their singular good conduct, and by the habits of sharing with their officers in the chase, and in their agricultural amusements, fishing parties, &c. had acquired a kindly nearness to them, not usually subsisting between those who command and they who must implicitly obey. What ties were broken! what hopes were blasted by this fatal order! These sad exiles embarked for Pensacola at the same time that their comrades set out for Ireland. My father returned, sunk in the deepest sadness, which was increased by our place of abode; for we had removed to the forsaken fort, where there was no creature but ourselves and three or four soldiers, who chose to stay in the country, and for whom my father had procured their discharge.