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From The Rapidan to Richmond
WILLIAM MEADE DAME
PRIVATE FIRST COMPANY OF RICHMOND HOWITZERS
1864
FROM THE RAPIDAN TO RICHMOND
AND
THE SPOTTSYLVANIA CAMPAIGN
A Sketch in Personal Narrative of the
Scenes a Soldier Saw
By
WILLIAM MEADE DAME, D. D.
Private, First Company
Richmond Howitzers
Baltimore
Green-Lucas Company
1920
Copyright, 1920, by Harry B. Green
To
My Comrades of the Army
of Northern Virginia
WILLIAM MEADE DAME, D. D.
RECTOR MEMORIAL PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH
BALTIMORE, MD.
1920
INTRODUCTION
By
Thomas Nelson Page
“The land where I was born” was, in my childhood, a great battleground.War—as we then thought the vastest of all wars, not only that had been,but that could ever be—swept over it. I never knew in those days a manwho had not been in the war. So, “The War” was the main subject in everydiscussion and it was discussed with wonderful acumen. Later it took ona different relation to the new life that sprung up and it bore its partin every gathering much as the stories of Troy might have done in theland where Homer sang. To survive, however, in these reunions as anarrator one had to be a real contributor to the knowledge of hishearers. And the first requisite was that he should have been an actorin the scenes he depicted; secondly, that he should know how to depictthem. Nothing less served. His hearers themselves all had experience anddemanded at least not less than their own. As the time grew more distantthey demanded that it should be preserved in more definite form and thedetails of the life grew more precious.
Among those whom I knew in those days as a delightful narrator ofexperiences and observations—not of strategy nor even of tactics inbattle; but of the life in the midst of the battles in the momentouscampaign in which the war was eventually fought out, was a kinsman ofmine—the author of this book. A delightful raconteur because he hadseen and felt himself what he related, he told his story withoutconscious art,[Pg xii] but with that best kind of art: simplicity. Also withperennial freshness; because he told it from his journals written on the