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Burnside that, having moved his army here in lawful expectation of pontoons, he could do nothing now but sit down by the waters as hopefully as might be and wait for them. 7
    In which posture, then, he paused by the river, not looking his best but definitely more sinned against than sinning. He waited because other men had failed and because he himself, decent, amiable man, could not conjure up the storm that would blow slackness and incompetence out of the channels of command. The general waited and the army waited, and on the opposite shore the Army of Northern Virginia began to assemble in all of its strength, and it waited likewise. What could once have been done with ease became presently a matter of great danger and difficulty. The overdue pontoon train which was the cause of all of this delay moved down from the upper Potomac like a bewildered snail, the men who were directly responsible for it doing their best but making little progress.
    These bridge tenders belonged to the 50th New York Engineers, one of the few volunteer sapper regiments in the army. The 50th New York had had the boats, balks, planks, wagons, and other equipment some fifty miles northwest of Washington, and just now it was this regiment's singular fate to epitomize the way in which things went wrong in this army.
    The engineers had had a bridge across the Potomac at Berlin, Maryland, ever since early October, and when McClellan moved his army down from western Maryland to the Warrenton area this had been the principal crossing. There was another pontoon bridge six miles upstream at Harper's Ferry, with a subsidiary bridge there over the Shenandoah as well. At Berlin, in addition to the bridge, there were fifty-six additional boats in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, plus a land train of twenty boats stacked up, ready to go, on ponderous wagons, together with other wagons full of supplementary equipment. The army had gone on south and the engineers sat idly and happily by their unused bridges and spare boats and waited for orders.
    When orders finally came they were six days late: first in the series of blunders which the army was eventually to pay for at Fredericksburg. GHQ had decided on November 6 to move the pontoon train down to Washington so that it could quickly be brought down into Virginia in case of need, but some functionary at GHQ forgot that there was such a thing as a military telegraph line and simply put the orders in the mail. As a result, it was November 12 before the orders got to Berlin and were opened by Major Ira Spaulding, commander of the 50th New York Engineers. Six days behind schedule, then, Major Spaulding learned what he was supposed to do.
    GHQ wanted to keep the bridges at Harper's Ferry, so Spaulding was to detail a company to take charge up there, sending with that company certain additional boats and planking for maintenance. The Berlin bridge was to be dismantled and its component parts were to be taken to Washington, along with all of the spare boats, wagons, and odds and ends of surplus equipment which were at Berlin. When Major Spaulding had got his regiment and all of this equipment to the Volunteer Engineer Brigade depot in Washington, his instructions said that he was to make up a pontoon train on wheels as rapidly as possible and stand by ready to move on a moment's notice.
    The major went to work promptly. By evening he had his bridge disassembled and a train of thirty-six boats was in the canal moving down toward Washington. Next morning another train of forty boats and materiel got off and the wagons were made ready to begin the journey overland. The company which had been detailed to stay at
    Harper's Ferry was made responsible for getting the last odds and ends rounded up and shipped; the rest of the regiment was on the way, either floating down the canal with the water-borne scows or slogging along overland with the great wagons. After making a final checkup Spaulding himself went to Washington by