The Captured Scout of the Army of the James

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Twenty-fourth sweltered and toiled with the other regiments, and won for itself a proud name by its brilliant charge on the rifle-pits in the very face of Wagner's guns. Thence it passed down the coast to Florida, and had a little rest in the quaint old Spanish city of St. Augustine. VETERAN RE-ENLISTMENTS.?LOVE FOR THE OLD FLAG. It was while the regiment was at St. Augustine that the call came from the government for the re-enlistment of its veteran soldiers. It did not take Henry Manning much longer to make up his mind to a second enlistment than it did to the first. Had he been wanted for thirty or fifty years, instead of three or five, he would doubtless have been ready. God be praised that such boys lived, and were willing to die, in the hour of our country's need ! A little incident, occurring as the veterans of the Twenty-fourth left St. Augustine, on the furlough granted them as a consideration of re-enlistment, well illustrated the character and spirit of the soldiers of the war. They were gatheredabout the head of the dock, just ready to embark for the North, to leave soldier-life for a while behind them. Their thoughts were naturally of their release from service, and of the homes and loved ones to which they were hastening. Their comrades, who were to remain behind, had assembled to see them off: citizens of the old town were also there; and all was glad-hearted cheerfulness. But unexpectedly to nearly all, as they stood thus together, the regimental colors were brought down from Fort Marion, to be taken with them to the North. As the dear old flag came in sight, ? the bullet-rent and storm-worn colors which they had followed unflinchingly on the weary march and in the battle's crash, and for which so many whom they loved had died, ? instinctively, as...