BREAKING RANKS. 361 March 1, 1865, the Union armies mustered, on the rolls, 965,941. The great bulk of the Rebel armies never surrendered at all, but quietly returned to their homes. Of the Union forces, 91,000 were killed in battle, or died of wounds, while the total Union loss was over 300,000. An appropriate reception was planned in Concord for the Fourteenth; but as the men, on the 19th, received a leave of absence, a week's delay was found to be necessary before discharges could be granted, the plan was never fully carried out. On the 26th the men returned to Concord, and signed the payrolls. On the 27th of July the men were paid off, and discharged from the service. The Fourteenth Regiment, as an active military organization, passed out of existence in a most commonplace manner. It would be agreeable to look back upon some closing formalities befitting the occasion, and consonant with the high dignity of the regiment's service, and the honorable name it had won. A final dress-parade would have measurably satisfied a sentiment which is doubtless more general and intense to-day than when the boys had just put army-life behind them, and emphatically declared that “military is played out." With blare of trumpet and roll of drum the Fourteenth mustered in 1862. Without demonstration or ceremony the same organization melted away in 1865, and its members "Folded their tents like the Arabs, The Fourteenth passed into the history which it helped to make and glorify, and its component parts became simply citizens of that Republic which they had done their full part to make secure and free. AFTER TWENTY YEARS. In the interest of this volume a member of the Fourteenth recently made a tour of the scenes of its service and campaign in Virginia. A present view, even by proxy, of the localities which entered so largely into the most important life-era of our veterans, must furnish an entertaining portion of this memorial. Certain descriptive passages which might properly have appeared in the history of the Shenandoah campaign are incorporated in this chapter. The journey to Washington was strikingly similar, in some particulars, to the passage of the Fourteenth to the seat of war. The route by boat and rail was much the same, and Baltimore was reached at the same hour in the early morning. But the arrival in Washington was different from that in the fall of 1862; the train stopping at a station on Sixth Street, south of Pennsylvania Avenue, it being the same in which President Garfield was shot; the route being by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which furnishes an elegant and quiet transit from New York to Wash- . ington by a route unknown in "war-times." Washington is wonderfully transformed, and the veteran soldier visiting the national capital will gaze with surprise upon the great advances made since the war. The numerous hospitals, extensive corrals for horses and mules, immense warehouses for quartermaster and commissary stores, winding miles of wagon and ambulance trains, the varied and almost immeasurable paraphernalia and panoply of colossal campaigns, provost-guards, patrols, detachments of soldiers of every arm of the service, general officers with their staffs and orderlies galloping through the streets toward camps in the suburbs, or on their way to outlying forts or rendezvous, all this, so familiar to the members of the Fourteenth for nearly a year, has entirely disappeared; and the brilliancy of a finished metropolis has superseded the shambling, dirty, and nondescript city of 1862. About the Capitol the transformation is most bewildering, delightful parterres and costly and artistic granite coping having supplanted the huge fences, sheds, bowlders, and construction débris incident to the great enlargement of the Capitol progressing while the Fourteenth enjoyed the title of "Lincoln's Pets." And in many portions of the city the post-bellum embellishments have wrought, as by magic, to transform the provincial Southern town of large dimensions into a magnificent city. Even the Washington Monument has been roused from its worse than Rip Van Winkle lethargy, and is now casting off its mantle of shame by rising to worthier altitudes. But there need be no cherishing of regrets over remorseless transitions. Washington is to-day a perfectly familiar spot to the veteran Union soldier, not only in its bold, salient features of general aspect, but in important and most interesting particulars. In some respects the changes in the capital amount to a splendid transformation, while other portions remain precisely as when the city and its environs formed a monster military camp. The boys who were stationed at Benning's Bridge would perceive no intrusive hand laid upon so much as a negro-cabin; in fact, it seemed as though the identical curly-pated urchins were punching the identical ebony toes into the identical mud sloughs which filled the foreground of a common picture twenty years ago. While the old soldier who used to guard Rebel prisoners at the "Old-Capitol Prison" would now feel himself lost, standing before the corner so much frequented by the Fourteenth, and would not recognize in the palatial block of residences the former whitewashed walls of the famous prison, now topped out with the common architectural outrage, a mansard roof; and while the detachments which so long stood guard on Sixth and Seventh-street Wharves might now feel lonesome in searching for their old quarters and familiar sutler and huckster shops, the famous heroes of the "Central GuardHouse" would revel in the grates, bars, cells, guard-room, and even the hose-bath parlor, all undisturbed, standing as though the squad and provost-marshal had marched off but yesterday. There was nothing incongruous, save several barrels of apples stored there by adjacent marketmen. We have seen a crowd in those cells and corridors, both of prisoners and guards, who had a taste sensitive enough to remove such an incongruity without delay. The old guard at the War Department would find a splendid structure on the corner of Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, instead of the well-remembered warehouse, dignified into the chief department of government, where Lincoln, Stanton, and the renowned commanders of the armies, held decisive consultations, while members of the Fourteenth stood guard within and without. The G-street Wharf detachment could never find their barracks, their beats, or any familiar object: the change is complete. But the heavy detachment so long posted at the south end of Long Bridge could suffer no such disappointment: the building occupied as barracks, guardroom, officers' quarters, and, above, for the improvised lyceum with its memorable debates; the grounds outside; the backyard, with its big trees, in whose bark there remain the initials of several members of the Fourteenth, every thing remains in about the same condition as it was when the post was vacated by the Fourteenth in January, 1864. The passenger-station of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, another post of duty for members of the Fourteenth, is in nearly the same condition as during the war. The most noticeable alteration is in the grade of the avenue in front, which has been so raised as to leave the depot down in a hole. Every point in Washington covered by details of the regiment was visited by the veteran on his tramp, but let it not be supposed that any spot was visited before the pilgrimage was made to Camp Adirondack. Striking New-York Avenue through familiar streets, we reach the well-remembered gardens of Ernst Loeffler. The old man is still there, though 'twas a palsied, almost helpless, hand we grasped; but the greeting was cordial. Beyond Loeffler's, hardly a change in the landscape has occurred until the camp is reached. The brook, embankments, crooked paths, buildings, are exactly as they were, and we were almost tempted to attempt a recognition of the very footprints of "our boys." The camp itself, in OLD LANDMARKS. 365 "Gale's" or "Patterson's Woods," is scarcely altered, save as a high board-fence about it, and the usual structures of a German beer-garden, change somewhat the general aspect. The trees are all there; the shallow gorge separating the tents of officers and men, the open parade-ground in front, and the running stream in the meadow below, - these are satisfactory in their likeness to the days of camping in 1863. The grading of the location of the tents of Company F's line-officers was easily discerned; the company street of H was distinctly traced; the locations of the company cook-houses were plain to the eye; while the sinks seem to remain just as they were left by the regiment. The well-remembered milk and newspaper vender, Heidemiller, is dead; but his son has supplanted the old farmhouse with an elegant residence. From Washington we proceed to Harper's Ferry, not by the circuitous route through the Relay Station, but over the new line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which furnishes the tourist with the best of accommodations. Passing within two miles of Poolesville, dashing round Point of Rocks, and while deeply buried in a revery which held us in the spell of war romances, we suddenly stop in the wild scenery and architectural dilapidation of Harper's Ferry. Not a breath seems to have stirred a leaf in that slowly disintegrating town since the hero of Ossawattomie sounded the dread bugle-note that crazed the phalanxes of the Old Dominion, and raised a political dust which only four years of blood drenching could lay. Curiously enough, the first sight for us to contemplate on leaving the cars was a veteran of the Eightyseventh Penn., dragging a hearse out from the renowned enginehouse, “John Brown's fort," as it is now placarded in big sign lettering. Let the old bullet-battered freedom castle remain a hearse-house, and a reminder of the fact, that, when Virginia dragged the "old fanatic" from the débris of an infuriated bombardment, she drew a hearse which carried to its entombment the decomposed body of an arrogant aristocracy. Such thoughts possessed us as we wandered through those streets, especially constructed for the benefit of the native "forty-rod |