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railroad, and late that night he reported to his boss, Brigadier General Daniel P. Woodbury. Woodbury looked at Spaulding's orders, and thus himself learned for the first time that a pontoon train was to be prepared for possible service with the army. The hour being late, he told Spaulding to come back next morning and they would see what new orders there might be.
    Next morning was November 14: the same day President Lincoln was telling Burnside that his plan of action was approved but that if he moved he had better move fast. While Spaulding waited at Woodbury's headquarters, Woodbury went off to see Halleck, who by now knew that Burnside had permission to move via Fredericksburg and who had previously been warned that if this move were made Burnside would have to have the pontoons immediately. Just what Halleck had on his mind that morning nobody ever quite made out, but in any case, Woodbury finally returned to his own office and told Spaulding to put his boats and wagons in depot as fast as they reached town and to put his men into camp. This, of course, countermanded the original orders to make up a new train and stand by.
    The first lot of boats came in that evening and more arrived next morning, November 15, as did a telegram from an engineer officer on Burnside's staff asking how about those pontoons. By night all of the men and materiel which had been at Berlin were in Washington. The mat6riel was stowed away in the engineer depot on the Anacostia River just above the navy yard, and the 50th Engineers were in camp nearby. That evening General Woodbury gave Spaulding a new set of orders: make up two pontoon trains of twenty-four boats each to go down to Belle Plain by water, the boats being made up in rafts, each boat to be loaded with its own allotment of planking, timbers, ropes, and other gear. As far as General Woodbury knew, the boats were wanted at Belle Plain, not elsewhere. Consequently, no wagons were sent with them, which meant that when they did reach Belle Plain there would be no way to carry them over to the Rappahannock.
    Getting these boat-rafts together was a chore, but the engineers kept at it smartly and next morning the steamer Hero showed up, took the rafts in tow, and went off downstream. This done, Spaulding was ordered to make up a train of twenty more boats, with transportation for forty, to go down to the Fredericksburg area by land. It took much longer to get this ready. First the major had to go to the quartermaster depot and draw two hundred horses. Then he had to indent for two hundred sets of harness, which were delivered at the engineer depot in their original boxes and so had to be unboxed and fitted together before they could be put on the horses—many of which, it then developed, had never been in any kind of harness before and had strong objections to being harnessed now. While this was going on, the major had to get teamsters detailed from the casuals' camp at Alexandria, had to draw rations and forage, and had to keep his own men busy loading the cumbersome boats and their equipment on wagons. All in all, it was the afternoon of November 19 before the train finally went creaking down from the engineer depot, rumbled across Long Bridge, crept on through Alexandria, and at last camped for the night in a pelting rain half a dozen miles from its starting point.
    Now Major Spaulding and his men had been working very hard, and they had even harder work ahead of them, but they were men who toiled in a gray nightmare and all that they did was vanity and a mockery. For while they were making up their train, and while the paddle-boat Hero with its ungainly rafts was chugging down the Potomac—to go hard aground, at last, and wait some hours for release—while all of this was happening, General Burnside and General Sumner were waiting by the Rappahannock fords with forty thousand good soldiers who could either cross the river free now or cross it at a dreadful price a little later on, and