The winter
was severe. Storms of rain, hail, sleet and snow poured upon them, but,
fortunately, they were marching through continuous forests, and the
skilled mountaineers, under any circumstances, knew how to build fires,
by the side of which they could dry themselves, and sleep warmly at
night.
They also heard much gossip as they advanced to meet General Thomas,
who had been sent from Louisville to command the Northern troops in the
Kentucky mountains. Thomas was a Virginian, a member of the old regular
army, a valiant, able, and cautious man, who chose to abide by the
Union. Many other Virginians, some destined to be as famous as he,
and a few more so, wondered why he had not gone with his seceding state,
and criticised him much, but Thomas, chary of speech, hung to his belief,
and proved it by action.
Dick learned, too, that the Southern force operating against Thomas,
while actively led by Zollicoffer, was under the nominal command of
one of his own Kentucky Crittendens. Here he saw again how terribly
his beloved state was divided, like other border states. General
Crittenden's father was a member of the Federal Congress at Washington,
and one of his brothers was a general also, but on the other side.
But he was to see such cases over and over again, and he was to see
them to a still greater and a wholesale degree, when the First Maryland
regiment of the North and the First Maryland regiment of the South,
recruited from the same district, should meet face to face upon the
terrible field of Antietam.
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