From that day until the end, the
sobriquet clung to him.
The disaster at Bull Run was followed, as the reader knows, by a long
period of masterly inactivity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was
concerned. McDowell, a good soldier but unlucky, retired to Arlington
Heights, and McClellan, who had distinguished himself in Western
Virginia, took command of the forces in front of Washington, and bent
his energies to reorganizing the demoralized troops. It was a dreary
time to the people of the North, who looked fatuously from week to week
for "the fall of Richmond"; and it was a dreary time to the denizens of
that vast city of tents and forts which stretched in a semicircle before
the beleaguered Capitol,--so tedious and soul-wearing a time that the
hardships of forced marches and the horrors of battle became desirable
things to them.
Roll-call morning and evening, guard-duty, dress-parades, an occasional
reconnaissance, dominoes, wrestling-matches, and such rude games as
could be carried on in camp made up the sum of our lives. The arrival of
the mail with letters and papers from home was the event of the day. We
noticed that Bladburn neither wrote nor received any letters. When the
rest of the boys were scribbling away for dear life, with drumheads and
knapsacks and cracker-boxes for writing-desks, he would sit serenely
smoking his pipe, but looking out on us through rings of smoke with a
face expressive of the tenderest interest.
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