728 YICAT, LOUIS JOSEPH. 



VIENNA. 



graduates of New England colleges. Many 

 were professional men of high standing, and 

 almost all were men of strictly temperate hab- 

 its. The remarkable stature of a considerable 

 number of the men attracted attention. Ten 

 men from one of the companies lay down upon 

 the ground for measurement, and formed a line 

 sixty-seven feet and ten inches in length. A 

 visitor admired the unusually firm and substan- 

 tial character of their blankets, so different 

 from the shoddy blankets of some of the regi- 

 ments from other States ; " Our wives and sis- 

 ters made them," said the Vermonter, proudly. 

 A second regiment from Vermont reached New 

 York ou the 25th June, and a third on the 24th 

 July. Two more followed in September, and a 

 sixth in October, making in all over 6,000 men 

 sent from this State. A cavalry regiment, in 

 addition, was subsequently organized, and a 

 large number of the citizens of the State en- 

 listed in regiments from adjacent States. 



The apportionment of the United States tax 

 of August 6, 1861, due from Vermont, and 

 amounting to $211,068, was assumed by the 

 State. 



The State election in September resulted in 

 an overwhelming majority for the Eepublican 

 and Union candidates. Frederick Holbrook, 

 the Republican and Union candidate for Gov- 

 ernor, received 40,000 votes, against 5,000 cast 

 for the other two candidates, one of whom was 

 nominated as " Union ; " the Legislature was 

 almost unanimously Union. The vote of the 

 State at the presidential election in 1860 was as 

 follows: Lincoln, 33,808; Douglas, 6,849; 

 Breckinridge, 218 ; Bell, 1,969. 



VIOAT, Louis JOSEPH, a French engineer, 

 born at Grenoble, France, March 31, 1786, died 

 at the same city, April 10, 1861. In 1804, he 

 entered the Polytechnic School, and graduated 

 in the corps of roads and bridges, in which he 

 speedily attained the rank of an engineer of the 

 first class. The study of mortars and cements, 

 then in its infancy, attracted his attention, and 

 in 1818 he published the first results of his 

 persevering researches under the title Ee- 

 cTierches experimentales sur les chaux de con- 

 struction les betons et les mortiers, Paris, 1818, 

 4to. Encouraged by his success, he made a 

 chemical analysis of those mortars which had 

 proved most durable, and found that they were 

 made with hydraulic cement, and that their 

 good properties were dependent upon the clay 

 disseminated through them. He published his 

 discoveries in this direction in his Resume des 

 connaissances actuelles sur les mortiers et les ce- 

 ments calcaires, Paris, 1828. The result of this 

 publication was an entire revolution in the 

 method of constructing the foundations of 

 bridges. M. Vicat was the first to apply his 

 own principles at Souillac in 1822, on a bridge 

 whose construction gave him a high reputa- 

 tion. He was next charged by government 

 with the investigation of the localities in 

 France which produced the best natural hy- 

 draulic lime, and with experiments for ascer- 



taining the proper materials and proportions 

 for reproducing it artificially. In this inves- 

 tigation he visited and explored 80 of the de- 

 partments of France, and his report was ad- 

 judged worthy of the statistical prize of the 

 Academy of Sciences in 1837. He had been 

 elected a corresponding member of the Acad- 

 emy in 1833. The report which received the 

 prize was published in 1839. The municipal 

 council of Paris, in token of their appreciation 

 of his labors, voted him a silver vase of the 

 value of $480, with the inscription, " The City 

 of Paris to M. Vicat, in commemoration of 

 the services rendered by his discoveries." Vi- 

 cat gave freely to the public the results of his 

 investigations, seeking no profit from their ex- 

 clusive use ; and, in token of their appreciation 

 of his disinterestedness, the French Chamber 

 of Deputies, in 1843, on motion of M. Arago, 

 decreed him a pension of $1,200 per annum, 

 with reversion to his children. He also re- 

 ceived the decoration of the orders of Russia, 

 Prussia, and Piedmont, and the rank of Com- 

 mander in the Legion of Honor, in February, 

 1846. After serving as engineer in chief of the 

 corps of roads and bridges for more than 20 

 years, he retired in 1851 to his native city. 

 His discoveries in the subject of cements have 

 been of immense value to France. He was also 

 the author of two or three works on suspension 

 "bridges. 



VIENNA is a small village on the railroad 

 which extends from Alexandria to Leesburg, in 

 Virginia. It is fifteen miles from Alexandria 

 and twenty-three miles from Leesburg. It was 

 the scene of surprise and disaster to the First 

 Ohio Regiment, Col. McCook, on the 17th of 

 June. On the day previous, a train of cars 

 passing over this portion of the road had been 

 fired upon, and one man killed. In conse- 

 quence, the Government resolved to place pick- 

 ets along the road, and this regiment, accom- 

 panied by Brig. -Gen. Schenck, set out in a train 

 of cars, and the men were distributed in de- 

 tachments along the line. As the cars ap- 

 proached Vienna, Col. Gregg, with 600 South 

 Carolinians, and a company of artillery and two 

 companies of cavalry, on a reconnoitring expe- 

 dition, heard the whistle of the locomotive. He 

 immediately wheeled his column and marched 

 back to Vienna, which he had just left. This 

 force had scarcely time to place two cannon in 

 position, when the train, consisting of six flats 

 and a baggage car, pushed by the locomotive, 

 came slowly around the curve. As the train 

 was about to stop, the artillery opened a well- 

 directed fire, which raked the cars from front to 

 rear. At the same time the coupling of the loco- 

 motive became detached or destroyed, and the 

 engineer retired, leaving the cars in their ex- 

 posed position. The Ohio Volunteers immedi- 

 ately took to the woods on each, side, and were 

 pursued a short distance by the Confederate in- 

 fantry and cavalry. The Federal loss was five 

 killed, six wounded, and seven missing. The 

 cars were burned, and a considerable quantity of 



