Show STOCK IN THE MUD A Funny Reminiscence of the Late War THEY FEASTED OX DRESSED DOG How a New Jerwy Regiment Got the Laugh on a Company of Vermont Yankees and Made ic SIck For TiE SUJTDAY HERALDCopyrightcd r Xr Yl 1 I r l t 1 t r Ii t J IU 1 f II rr 0 I r J o t 11 I J i IAauast s w VERY OLD SOLdier l SOL-dier of tho army of the Potomac remembers S remem-bers Burnsides mud I march It began on January 221SC3 This was forty days after his defeat at Fredericksburg Freder-icksburg In an effort to retrieve it he followed the example of Charles XIL and opened a winter campaign He tried to strike the Rappahannock some miles above Fredericksburg cross the river on pontoons and reach Lees rear It began to rain on the evening of the 22nd and it rained incessantly in-cessantly for three days The pontoons I never reached the river They were stuck in seas of mud Nearly every man in the army was wet to the waist for days in efforts ef-forts to drag them to dry ground The Confederates on the other side of the Rap pahunnock quickly divined the situation They stuck up immense placards on the bank of the river bearing such inscriptions as Burnsiiles Army Stuck in the Mud Burnside is not McCIellan and other pat sayings When the sun began to shine and the pontoons were dragged from the sloughs the army went back to its old camp Everybody was disheartened The peninsula veterans who were staunch Mc Clellan men shook their heads mournfully saying I told you how it would be The discontent rose to such a pitch that there was a spirit of mutiny in some of the regiments regi-ments Hundreds of desertions occurred every day and he army had no confidence in its commander until JOE HOOKER SUCCEEDED nR SIDE I was a sergeant in Company C of the Tweutysixth New Jersey Volunteers at this time The New Jersey regiment was part of the Second brigade This brigade bad won a brilliant reputation on the peninsula pen-insula and at Anueiam it was known in the army of the Potomac as the Vermont brigade It was composed with the exception excep-tion of the Jersey regiment of Vermont troops They were lull ungainly Yankees They drawled their words and gave them a peculiar nasal twang Their feet were so big that the Johnnies compared them 0 to oldfastiioned griddles A Mississippian once told me they were so big that whenever j I when-ever he klled a Vermont Yankee he had togo to-go up aud shove him over before he would tamale I saw some captured North Carolinians Caro-linians sent in from the front at the first battle of Fredericksburg In stature gait and accent they resembled Vermonters i I believe that i they had worn the Federal uniform the Vermonters themselves would i have taken them for brothers WE WENT INTO CAMP after the mud march near White Oak church About two weeks afterwards Bill Young a big Scotchmau in our regiment confiscated a sheep owned by some farmer in the vicinity He bad found a little copse in an outoftheway nook where he butchered butch-ered the sheep hung the carcass to tne limb of a tree by its bind legs aud dressed it He had hardly finished the work when he was frightened by a file of men who were approaching the spot After hastily concealing carcass ho sneaked back to camp Two hours later he returned to the copse The mutton seemed to be all right jIt did not apnear to have been disturbed j He avoided collision with the camp guano j and managed to get it to his shelter tent after dark Then be cut it up and distrib I utep it among his friends in the ranks and the commissioned oflicers Ttrricd cpc1 r = Twentyfour hours afterward a Vermont regiment then commanded by Louis A Grant now assistant secretary of war and by the way Kcdlieid Proctor was captain in the sumo regiment passed through our camp on picket detail As they struck Company Cs street through which they marched down the hill they all began to bark like docs The Terseymen rushed from their tents and wondered what all tho barking meant The Vermonters kept up the canine demonstration for half a mile yelling with delight Commissioned officers who bad partaken of the mutton wero the first t solve the riddle Some of the cold meat was left After the Vermont demonstration It did not taste like mutton It was a little rank one said and TASTED MORE LIKE COOS MEAT that had not been parboiled Many who had received Lao gift were sick at the stomuch It turned outthatsome bright Vermonter had seen Young at work on the sheep Ho rang in his comrades and frightened the Scotchman back to camp Then they stole the carcass and put inits place the dressed body of an old Newfoundland dog that had been following a Wisconsin brigade When the Vermonters returned from picket duty and began to cross our camp the barking was resumed This time the te Jerseymen were ready for them From 700 throats came the cry Head cheese headcheese head-cheese you dd Yankees This cry gave a pallor to the Vermont faces Their stomachs were turned While they were on picket duty some German in the Jersey regiment had gathered a of the cold roast dog in camp turned it into h lad cheese and peddled it on the Vermont picket reserve Head cheese was a delicacy rarely seen in the I army It bad gone like hot cakes Everybody bought it Possibly even Secretary Proctor and General LouisA Louis-A Grant got their chare of it At all events there was BO more barking and no more buying of bead cheese on the picket I le Ao J CUJG I 1 u |