Raising the Regiment 17 



for months in the ranks, while I, their former inti- 

 mate associate, was a field-officer; but they insisted 

 that they knew their minds, and the events showed 

 that they did. We enlisted about fifty of them from 

 Virginia, Maryland, and the Northeastern States, 

 at Washington. Before allowing them to be sworn 

 in, I gathered them together and explained that if 

 they went in they must be prepared not merely to 

 fight, but to perform the weary, monotonous labor 

 incident to the ordinary routine of a soldier's life; 

 that they must be ready to face fever exactly as they 

 were to face bullets; that they were to obey un- 

 questioningly, and to do their duty as readily if 

 called upon to garrison a fort as if sent to the front. 

 I warned them that work that was merely irksome 

 and disagreeable must be faced as readily as work 

 that was dangerous, and that no complaint of any 

 kind must be made ; and I told them that they were 

 entirely at liberty not to go, but that after they had 

 once signed there could then be no backing out. 



Not a man of them backed out ; not one of them 

 failed to do his whole duty. 



These men formed but a small fraction of the 

 whole. They went down to San Antonio, where 

 the regiment was to gather and where Wood pre- 

 ceded me, while I spent a week in Washington hur- 

 rying up the different bureaus and telegraphing my 

 various railroad friends, so as to ensure our getting 



