Your Brother in Arms by Robert C. Plumb

Author:Robert C. Plumb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Missouri Press

The Regiment—155th Pennsylvania Infantry

We marched about three miles through the rain and mud, each company stopping by itself … We passed Catlett’s [Station] and arrived at Warrenton Junction at night, wet, weary wicked and muddy, very tired if not wiser men. We have never been able to discover why we were marched day and night through rain and mud, first one direction and then turn and go the other way. This is likely to remain one of the unsolved problems of the war. We were now back in the same place we had left three weeks previous.”

—D. P. Marshall, Company K 155th PA Volunteers, December 1863

The troops of the Fifth Corps, while in winter camp at Rappahannock Station, were responsible for guarding the railroad lines against raids by John Mosby’s rebel guerrillas, who seemed, at times, to be omnipresent. The mounted Confederate partisans swooped in, raided unsuspecting Union units, and then disappeared into the surrounding countryside. As a precaution, Union trains that collected at various rail junctions in the area would keep their steam up all night in the event they had to move quickly to avoid Mosby’s men. Guerrilla activity put an abrupt end to the Union practice of allowing wives of senior officers to accompany their husbands in winter camp. Several of Mosby’s men, dressed in Union uniforms, replaced Union pickets and raided camps near the railroad. After this incident, visitation by wives was no longer allowed because of the “attending risk and danger.”

As personnel were being shifted at the top of the Army of the Potomac command structure, changes closer to the 155th were also occurring. Colonel Garrard, brigade commander, was promoted to brigadier general and reassigned to lead a division of cavalry in the western theater. Garrard, a strong proponent of the Zouave drill, had been instrumental in outfitting the 155th in Zouave uniforms. By the end of January 1864, the transformation of the 155th to a Zouave unit was complete. During this period, John Cain, 155th regimental commander, resigned to return to his business in Pittsburgh. Colonel Alfred L. Pearson was put in command of the unit. He took great pride in seeing his men outfitted in Zouave uniforms and invited his wife to attend some of the early dress parades and reviews until permission for wives to enter winter camp was withdrawn.

The threat of rebel guerrilla raids persisted, but the prospects for a major campaign by the Army of the Potomac decreased as 1863 came to a close. Soldiers who had not seen family for nearly a year and a half thought that the reduced military activity, coupled with the onset of Christmas and New Year holidays, made for an optimum time to request furloughs in order to travel home to see relatives and friends. The demand for ten-day furloughs was high, yet the barriers to obtaining such leave were even higher.

While the Confederate army, encamped south of the Rapidan River, suffered a miserable winter with meager rations and a depleted number of fighting men, the Army of the Potomac enjoyed an abundance of food and fresh recruits arriving by train.

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