By the 25th the road was completed as far as Brandy Station, the bridge rebuilt, and a large amount of supplies brought up; and the army was ordered to move at an early hour on the 26th.
The hour for moving was assigned each corps, and the order in which it was to march, that no delay or confusion might occur. The Third corps was to start as soon as daylight, and the Sixth was to follow it.
Our Sixth corps was moving at sunrise, the hour designated, toward Brandy Station. Presently the head of the column halted in the midst of the camps of the Third corps, which were yet undisturbed. According to the order for marching, the Third corps was to precede the Sixth, and should have been out of camp before we arrived, but as yet not a tent was struck nor a wagon loaded, and most of the men were asleep in their quarters. The Sixth corps was obliged to halt and stand in the mud for hours, waiting for the delinquent corps to get out of the way. Here was the first blunder of the new campaign.
At length at eleven o'clock we moved again, taking the road to the Rapidan. Our march was slow and tedious, and instead of reaching the river at noon as was expected, and as General Meade's orders contemplated, the head of the Third corps only reached the river at Jacobs' Ford long after dark, and here again a delay was occasioned by a mistake of the engineers, who had not brought a sufficient number of boats to this point to complete the pontoon bridge; a part of the bridge had therefore to be extemporized out of poles.
The road for several miles was merely a narrow passage cut through the forest; a dense growth of stunted pines and tangled bushes, filling up the space between the trees of larger growth. Our corps moved along very slowly, halting for a moment, then advancing one or two rods, then standing still again for perhaps several minutes, and again moving forward for a few steps. This became very tedious. The men were faint and weary, and withal discouraged. They were neither advancing nor resting.
From one end of the column of the Sixth corps to the other, through the miles of forest the shout, coffee! coffee! passed from one regiment to another, until there could be heard nothing but the vociferous demand for coffee. At eleven o'clock at night the order "ten minutes rest for coffee," passed down the line and was received with shouts of approval. Instantly the roadside was illuminated with thousands of little fires, over which the soldiers were cooking their favorite beverage.