Theodore Winthrop

“ Night increases this fascination. The outer world is vague in the moonlight. Objects out of our ranks are lost. I see only glimmering steel and glittering buttons and the light-stepping forms of my comrades. ”

“ We move as one man. A man made up of a thousand members and each member a man, is a grand creature, — particularly when you consider that he is self-made. And the object of this self-made giant, men-man, is to destroy another like himself, or the separate pigmy members of another such giant. We have failed to put ourselves — heads, arms, legs, and wills — together as a unit for any purpose so thoroughly as to snuff out a similar unit. Up to 1861, it seems that the business of war compacts men best.
Well, the Seventh, a compact projectile, was now flinging itself along the road to Washington. ”

“ Our groups were never more entertaining than at this halt by the roadside on the Alexandria road. Stacks of guns make a capital framework for drapery, and red blankets dot in the lights most artistically. The fellows line the road with their gay array, asleep on the rampage, on the lounge, and nibbling at their rations. ”

“ It is part of the simple perfection of the machine, a regiment, that, though it drops to pieces for a rest, it comes together instantly for a start, and nobody is confused or delayed. We moved half a mile farther, and presently a broad pathway of reflected moonlight shone up at us from the Potomac. ”

“ Nothing men can do — except picnics, with ladies in straw flats with feathers, — is so picturesque as soldiering. As soon as the Seventh halt anywhere, or move anywhere, or camp anywhere, they resolve themselves into a grand tableau. ”