WAR RAILROADING.

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other man would have thought of as practicable, was afterward the master of transportation of the road from which he confiscated the engines.

The Fourteenth became quite familiar with the Baltimore and Ohio road, and traversed the beautiful sections of country which it penetrates, under rather unfavorable conditions for tourist enjoyments: yet few of the veterans can forget the importance of the road to ourselves or the marvellous beauty of its routes.

"During all the stormy and disastrous years of the war, the management proved the master-hand at the helm. Running through the reports of that period of calamity and distraction, the same indomitable tone is manifested, the unflinching purpose and the determined will to conquer difficulties. The road first, all else after it.

"No man rendered greater service to the country in her darkest hours of peril, and no instrument could have been more powerful in rendering this assistance, than an unobstructed railway. Bridges were burned, only to be replaced the following day. Miles of track were torn up, and put down again almost before the destroying forces were gone from sight. Engines were stolen, and new ones filled their places as rapidly as wheels could be turned in covering the distance. Entire trains were sacrificed to the flames, telegraph-wires demolished, and station-houses razed to the ground, and disaster followed upon disaster. The main stem of the road penetrated the heart of war operations; and, increase as might the destruction following in their wake, the unshakable man in Baltimore devised counter movements, and was a very Napoleon in strategic force and quickness of action."

At eight A.M., January 7, the Fourteenth arrived in Baltimore, and remained there three days awaiting transportation. A portion of the regiment occupied barracks, while the remainder went into tents. On the 10th the regiment went on board the steamship "Ariel," and about noon of the next day the steamer sailed. On the morning of the 12th the "Ariel" arrived at Fortress Monroe, and in the afternoon sailed through Hampton Roads to Newport News, where the men went ashore. The next day they re-embarked, and started for Savannah.

On the night of the 15th the vessel lay off Port Royal, and on the morning of the 16th proceeded to the mouth of the Savannah River; and on the 17th the Fourteenth reached its destination.

During the war Savannah was one of the most beautiful cities of the South. It was compact, regularly laid out, picturesquely located, and its streets were bountifully adorned with shade-trees. Some of the streets, notably Broad Street, were wide avenues containing four rows of trees; the centre rows forming a continuous park. When the war broke out, the city contained about twenty thousand inhabitants.

Savannah was a favored city throughout the conflict until near its close, and was not subject to the ravages of war. It was a thriving port of contraband trade for the Confederacy, and its inhabitants were prosperous beyond most sections of Rebeldom. Savannah was an intensely Rebel town, and the Fourteenth found it conquered but not subdued.

When the second division occupied Savannah, the troops were taken up the river on small transport-steamers; a narrow cut having been made through the river barricade which had proved an effectual bar to the passage of Union gunboats. This barricade was sunk about three miles below the city, at Fort JackThe Rebel government of Savannah had torn up the fine stone paving of Whitaker Street with which to fill and sink the pontoon obstructions, and relegated one of the best streets in the city to a sand-bank or mud-hole, according to the season.

When the Fourteenth entered Savannah, Sherman's army was leaving it; the inhabitants bitterly hating the "Yankee bummers." The city was in a peculiar condition. Terror, hate, doubt, foreboding, were sentiments which predominated among the inhabitants at first. The civil government was entirely superseded: the city was taken entirely out of the hands of its inhabitants, and was governed by military officials throughout; one of the Fourteenth men being a street-commissioner. Not a citizen of Savannah had a store or a shop open: the trading was all done by permits from the commanding general; business of every kind was dead; and the railroad communication had been destroyed by Rebel and by Union troops, from opposite motives.

Savannah was a body corporate in a state of suspended animation. The Fourteenth was at once assigned to provost-duty,

and it was done in a manner to inspire confidence and win the respect of the Rebel partisans. The regiment was more experienced and proficient in provost-duty than any other in the department; and its excellent discipline and reliable service was a potent factor in restoring confidence, and reviving a sentiment favorable to the government, at a critical period.

The Fourteenth was, with the exception of the two first days, quartered in buildings in the heart of the city, until the last of February, when it went into camp in stockaded A tents, in a railroad cotton-yard west of the city. It was also relieved of all special duty in the city at the same time. The duty of the regiment in the city began on the 19th.

On the 27th the last of Sherman's army, the Twentieth Corps, left Savannah to join his force moving through South Carolina. On the 28th occurred an extensive conflagration, involving the destruction of the arsenal filled with shells and other dangerous explosive combustibles. Details of the Fourteenth heroically removed shells from the burning magazine until they began to explode. Pieces of shells were thrown into all parts of the city; and the troops were obliged to withdraw to the shelter of a safe distance, and allow the fire to take its course until the next day. The scene was one of great excitement and terror among the inhabitants.

An immense number of refugees flocked to Savannah after its occupation by the Union army. White Unionists who had been hiding in the mountains, swamps, and forests of Georgia, South Carolina, and Northern Florida, to escape the conscription; deserters from the Rebel army; and sufferers from Sherman's march, sought the protection of the Union lines, many of them utterly destitute.

Thousands of negroes followed in Sherman's trail, some of them travelling hundreds of miles in the search for freedom. During the winter strenuous efforts were made by the Rebel authorities to prevent their escape to Savannah. They were pursued by bloodhounds, and often shot down like dogs when caught; and sometimes, out of a large number who started from

the interior, only two or three would reach Savannah, and these in a most forlorn condition.

To provide for the colored refugees and the most destitute of the whites, refugee-camps were established, under the charge of Lieut. M. M. Holmes, of Company H.

What to do with the negro, was a vexed problem to the government; and in the absence of any settled policy each armycommander acted largely according to his own views.

On the 16th of January, 1865, Gen. Sherman issued General Order, No. 15, which provided that "The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice-fields along the river for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering on the St. John's River in Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States."

Gen. Rufus Saxton was appointed "Inspector of Settlements and Plantations," and a regular system of settlement of the seaislands was adopted. These islands are very rich, and produce the celebrated sea-island cotton. A steamboat made regular trips between Savannah and the islands; and providing each man, woman, and child with rations for thirty days, Lieut. Holmes sent forward over twenty thousand between January and July, while many others were found employment in Savannah and elsewhere. Scantily clad, and weakened by the hardship and exposure experienced in reaching Savannah, many died during the winter; but in the spring and early summer the mortality was small, which was partly owing to the weather, and partly to the better regulations of the camp.

Corpl. H. E. Poor was detailed at the white camp. With few exceptions, the refugees here did not remain long, but found employment or a place to stay elsewhere; many of them, however, still drawing government rations. For many weeks after the capture of Savannah, almost the entire population drew rations from the government.

March 5 Capt. C. P. Hall, with his company (C) and enough men from the rest of the regiment to make up the number to sixty, received orders to be ready to take steamer for Fort Pulaski. They did not get off till the next morning, owing to lack of transportation. They landed at the fort about nine o'clock, and relieved the troops who were occupying it. Capt. Hall took command of the fort and the adjacent islands.

Fort Pulaski is situated on Cockspur Island, Ga., at the head of Tybee Roads, commanding both channels of the Savannah River. The position is a very strong one. It was captured from the Rebels in April, 1862, by Gen. Q. A. Gillmore, after a bombardment of thirty-two hours. Its capture demonstrated the fact-new to this country - that bricks and mortar cannot stand before rifled cannon. The walls of the fort, seven and one-half feet thick, and twenty-five feet high above high water, were battered down so as to make two openings through to the casemates, and the ditch, forty-five feet wide, upon the outside of the fort, was so filled with the débris, that the troops marched through the opening when they took possession of the fort.

At the time the fort was occupied by the Fourteenth, the breach had been repaired; but shells were still sticking in the walls in several places. It had an armament of sixty guns, ranging from twelve-pounder James rifles to ten-inch Columbiads and hundred-pounder Parrott rifles; twenty-two thousand pounds of power, a proportionate amount of shot and shell, and all the material necessary to make the outfit of an old-line fort complete.

This opened a new field to our boys. Capt. Hall received an order the next day after he took command to drill his men regularly upon the heavy guns. They did not know the difference between a casemate and a barbette gun, a Columbiad and a Parrott, the chase of a cannon and the re-enforce. But a search brought a copy of heavy-artillery tactics, and the next mail from New York another: so that a fortnight had not