When I awoke the sun was up, and upon inquiry I was informed that about two o'clock in the morning a message was received from headquarters countermanding the order for the assault. After the war, I read in some of General Grant's writings that after assenting to this proposed assault he was awake in his tent thinking over the prospects of its success and decided that the chances in the darkness were against it. Therefore, soon after midnight, he directed that the order for it be countermanded. I assume that the contemplated assault was to include other troops than the division I was detailed to accompany.
One night, while with my company in the breastworks, I was sent for and informed by Colonel Raulston that General Burnside had requested him to recommend an officer whom he could send to Washington to bring back with him, at the earliest possible moment, some carbine ammunition for our regiment, it being of a different calibre from that used by the other regiments of the division, which were infantry. Colonel Raulston told me he had decided to detail me for this duty and directed me to report to General Burnside. I rode to the latter's headquarters, where he gave me a letter to the War Department and one addressed to his wife. The latter he requested me to mail in Washington, mail communication with the army at that time having been temporarily cut off.
I started immediately in a dense fog for Belle Plain, riding all night, and was obliged to procure a fresh horse in the morning at Fredericksburg. I sailed from Belle Plain for Washington, arriving the next morning, and as soon as the War Department opened for business I presented my letters, and was informed that the necessary ammunition would be placed on a tug which would be ready to sail for Belle Plain that afternoon.
I was told that a permit had been given to the late Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio, and George H. Stuart, the president of the Christian Commission, to go on the boat with me, they having been granted permission to go to the front to look into the practical working of the United States Christian Commission. When the tug sailed, I being the only United States officer or soldier on board, Mr. Stuart introduced himself to me, and then presented me to the Bishop. Later he came to me and said that it was proposed to have a brief prayer-meeting in the cabin, at which were present the Bishop, Mr. Stuart, and one or two representatives of the Christian Commission, and a lady, who, I was told, had a pass from Mr. Lincoln permitting her to go to the front to see her son, who was wounded. It impressed me as an exceedingly pathetic and remarkable incident, and I remember that, being brought up a Presbyterian, I was a little curious to see whether the Bishop would read his prayers from the prayer-book or would make one extemporaneously. He, however, made what seemed to me then one of the most affecting and beautiful extempore prayers I ever listened to. When the little steamboat reached Belle Plain, the Bishop's party were put into an ambulance and had an escort of a part of a regiment to take them to Fredericksburg, as the intervening country was raided by Mosby's men and all wagon trains between Belle Plain and Fredericksburg had to be heavily guarded.