Today in History:

748 Series I Volume XIX-I Serial 27 - Antietam Part I

Page 748 OPERATIONS IN N. VA., W. VA., MD., AND PA. Chapter XXXI.

Question. Do you know anything of an officer named Rouse having been paroled?

Answer. A lieutenant?

Question. Yes, sir.

Answer. Yes, sir; I heard that matter spoken of, and saw the officer the night he was brought back by our cavalry. I understood that he had been paroled and had violated his parole, and our cavalry had gone out in pursuit of him and had caught him at Berryville and brought him back. The night he was brought back I was out with Colonel Sherrill and Major Baird, of the One hundred and twenty-sixth New York, examining our picket lines, and we came in contact with the cavalry party and this lieutenant as they were passing into camp. I understood the next day that he was paroled again.

Question. He had, then, violated his parole before being taken a prisoner the second time?

Answer. Yes, sir; so I understood, I never got thoroughly to understand the form in which he had violated it; but there was something about going to the hospital, and, instead of doing that, he had slipped through our picket line and made his escape.

Question. How long was that before the surrender?

Answer. That was, I think, the first night I was appointed to the command of the brigade. I do not recollect what the dates were.

Question. How many days before the surrender?

Answer. I have lost the reckoning of time so completely that I can hardly tell. It was the night of the 5th or 6th of September, I think, that this lieutenant was returned and brought back by our cavalry. Colonel Miles had given me, apparently with the view of getting rid of the responsibility, the controlling of the ingress to and egress from our camp; had thrown upon me the responsibility of controlling the matter; that os one excuse for my taking upon myself to stop these 15 men that night. I had been regulating g that matter for several days, freeing Colonel Miles from all trouble and vexation about it.

By the COURT:

Question. Did you hear at the time of the surrender, or after, any dissatisfaction in regard to it expressed on the part of the men or the regimental officers?

Answer. No, sir; I never heard a soldier or an officer express dissatisfaction about the matter until, at Annapolis, in the presence of some officers with whom I was not acquainted, Colonel Willard, very much to my astonishment, made a remark to which I replied at the moment.

Question. You heard nothing of it, at the time, at Harper's Ferry?

Answer. No, sir.

Question. What was your losses in your regiment in killed and wounded?

Answer. That report was made by me to General White, at Annapolis, and, the officers being out of camp and having no conveniences for writing, I was so late in getting it in that I did not get an opportunity of looking over the list of killed and wounded, and then I was crippled at Annapolis, and never had an opportunity since of learning it.

Question. Did you not know at the time how many you lost?

Answer. I understood - I do not recollect at what time; some time, during the day after the surrender probably, that I met the officers of the regiment --

Question. I am speaking of your own regiment, the Sixtieth.

Answer. I understood from the officers of the Sixtieth that they lost 8 or 10 men, but I cannot say positively as to the number; that regiment was immediately on the right of Rigby's batteries and in the rifle-pits, and the enemy had not succeeded in getting the range perfectly until about the time of the surrender, when a shell burst


Page 748 OPERATIONS IN N. VA., W. VA., MD., AND PA. Chapter XXXI.