Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father
Camp of the 1st Mass. Cav’y
Warrenton, Va.,
September 5, 1863
I write today simply to keep up my sequence of letters, for I have no more to say than I had last week. Again we have moved camp and we now find ourselves in our old place near Warrenton. Our week of outlying picket was very uneventful so far as this regiment was concerned, although one day the enemy did catch a patrol of some fifty of the 6th Ohio and play the very devil with them, running them down to our very pickets and killing, wounding or capturing two-thirds of their number. They hurried us out to attend to matters and we pelted up to the scene of action, but the enemy were gone long before we got there, though we didn’t spare horse-flesh, and it only remained for us to pick up the pieces and come in. The rebs did the thing very neatly — the old story, an ambush, a large party in reserve, an unexpected sally, headlong flight and vigorous pursuit, the whole closing with an unmolested retreat in possession of plunder, horses and prisoners. In going out I had charge of the advance and, as we pushed rapidly along by dead horses and wounded men, I was glad to see one thing I never saw before — women caring for our wounded. They were Virginians, and only the week before our regiment searched their house for one of their two brothers in the confederate Army; but now we found the old father and four daughters, two miles this side of their home, near which the surprise took place, doing what they could for one of our Sergeants who had fallen by the road-side. The man died next morning. Only one man had been killed outright at the first fire, and he was neatly laid out by the side of the road, stripped to his underclothes in most approved fashion. We picked up the dead and wounded and returned to camp. . . .
You seem to feel great fears of the low countries for campaigning, but the summer is passed and few collections of men four hundred strong could have enjoyed better health than this regiment. The Virginia climate has now nothing new for us, as our campaigns began now some days more than a year ago. For myself I am free to say I consider Virginia as possessing in natural attributes more that would belong to an earthly Eden than any region I ever set foot in. The climate is wonderfully fine, the soil naturally fertile, the rivers are beautiful to a degree, the mountains fine and the valleys almost perfection. So much of it man has not been able to destroy or to disguise. This war, if we remain one country, has blasted and is going to redeem Virginia. It has effectually destroyed a pernicious system of labor and a new one must supply its place. Then, some day, it may be as prosperous as New England, and, if it ever is, it will be a land of milk and honey.
As to unhealthiness I see nothing of it. The unhealthiness of armies arises not from climate but from filth. I see that the new correspondent of the Times begins with the wonderful filth of our soldiers. I can only suppose that he compares foreign armies in garrison with ours in campaign, for I do not believe that foreign soldiers are cleaner than ours in the field. Statistics of mortality from camp disease in the Crimea as compared with any episodes of our war I think will not show such to be the case. Is the Crimea or Turkey so much more unhealthy than Morris Island, New Orleans and Vicksburg? Still an army, any army, does poison the air. It is a city without sewerage, and policing only makes piles of offal to be buried or burned. Animals die as they do not die in cities and, if buried, are apt to be insufficiently so. Then animals are slaughtered for beef and so, what with fragments of food and scraps of decaying substances, all festering under a mid-summer sun, an army soon breeds a malaria which engenders the most fatal of fevers. . . .
