The Maine bugle ... campaign; 1-5 Jan. 1894-Oct. 1898 - Maine.gov

WITH GENERAL SHERIDAN. 301
curiosity to see anything in the shape of a Yankee would ask
to have Young pointed out.
At the Rowanty we learned from the prisoners and the scouts
that a considerable body of the enemy's cavalry was marching
on roads parallel with us on the other side of Stony Creek,
pushing apparently for Dinwiddle Court House, to intercept us ;
so we moved on rapidly and gained that point, and the rebellious
column let us alone when the uncaptured portion of their pick-
ets galloped away from the court-house, and, dashing across the
Stony Creek by the Boydton Plank Road bridge, informed
their friends on the other side that Sheridan's cavalry was there.
A party of our men quickly secured the bridge, tore up the
planks, and made other arrangements for disputing the passage ;
but no attempt to cross was made by the enemy, who accepted
the situation and hurried on to secure their connection with
their own army, and to get between us and the Southside Rail-
road. Meanwhile we peacefully occupied Dinwiddle Court
House, and went into camp in that vicinity.
In Virginia court-houses mean towns, and the towns are prin-
cipally court-houses ; here, however, there was a hotel thrown
in, and a couple of cottages by way of outskirts. Perhaps
there were three ;
there is no intention to be unjust to Dinwiddle,
and it is more than a year since we were there. Yes, there
were three. There was the long, low mansion with a leaky
piazza, in the hollow on the right ; the little house on the hill,
where we all took breakfast, for which the man took a dollar a
head ;
and the brick house by the temple of justice, which
looked like a school house, but probably was not. We estab-
lished ourselves at the Dinwiddle Hotel,— hotel no longer
except in name and in legend, for nobody ever passed by now
but straggling cavalrymen, and cooking for them was reported
to be not remunerative. Some of the pickets had slept there,
though, for all the beds in the unoccupied rooms of the house
were topsy-turvy,—and such beds !
the
feelings of the Northern
matron would have been too great for utterance in contemplat-
ing them, and as for sleeping in them — even v/e were not