Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams
August 8, 1863. Sulphur Springs
(continuation of letter started August 2)
A little tour of picket has cut the thread of my letter. I went out early Monday morning and got in yesterday at noon. By the way, that reminds me of the conversation you mention you had with Sir Edward Cust, in which he spoke with pleasure of picket. The General’s memory does not betray him. Summer picket is the pleasantest work we have to do, and is really charming. Winter picketing is terrible, and neither he nor any man can extract any pleasure from it. I hardly had my share fall to me last winter, but I did enough. A cold, snowy day, followed by fourteen hours of night, during which miserable men, with numb fingers and freezing feet, sit motionless on jaded horses, ever listening for an enemy who will not come except when he is n’t expected, is no idea of mine of pleasure. Summer is very different. During the last week I have been picketing the Hazel River, just above its junction with the Rappahannock. The weather has been very fine, hot, but glorious for August. The enemy was just the other side of the river and just active enough to keep up one’s excitement, and my command was an independent one of about 150 men. At the fords the enemy were disposed to be very sociable, and as the river was hardly ten yards broad, nothing but orders interfered with our intercourse. Here, away from the nuisance of the infantry, we again got milk and eggs and butter, chickens, pigs and sheep, and we lived better than we have for many a day. The anxiety wears a little on one, for though one soon gets accustomed to the proximity of the enemy, the necessity of continued vigilance and perpetual preparation gets wearisome at last. Still it is very pleasant, this getting away from camps, brigades and infantry, away from orders, details and fatigue duty, out to the front with no army near, the enemy before you and all quiet along your line.
I was quite interested in what you reported General Cust as saying of the European cavalry, and it rather surprised me. I knew the Germans were good, but so I thought were the English also. We ourselves however come up to his mark of excellence in the Germans in the care of our horses; at least in our regiment, which is rather exceptional in most respects. If we are to march at sunrise we are called before the first break of day. Immediately after reveille roll-call the horses are groomed and then fed. The men then get their breakfasts. We march in columns of fours or, if the road is narrow, twos, and by squadrons. We even in spite of hard work keep up some finery. Ah, what a squadron I had on the morning of the 17th of June!! Any man might have been proud of it. First rides the chief of squadron and immediately behind him are the four bugles, mounted on their white horses and with their trumpets slung over their shoulders. Then comes the first chief of platoon, by the side of the Sergeant guide, and then the column, in closed up ranks of fours. In the rear the 2d Captain. On the march no man is allowed to fall out or straggle, without the permission of the 2d Captain, and in my squadron this rule is rigidly enforced. We rarely halt during our march and average usually three miles an hour. We have few rules of dress, simply enforcing dark hats or caps and dark blue blouses, with light blue trousers; but, I am sorry to say that in all these respects our regiment is far ahead of the average of our cavalry, which, while it straggles through a country like a cloud of locusts, looks like a mob of ruffians, and fights and forages like a horde of Cossacks. I speak now of the mass. The regulars are better and some of the volunteers, but the mass of the last would excite the special wonder and extreme mirth of European officers of the line until they met them in campaign. Nothing is known of our cavalry abroad, and it is only just now rising into a system; but some day when I have leisure I don’t know but I’ll write you a letter about them for the edification of Sir Edward and his friends in the English army. . . .
We are encamped just south of the Rappahannock at Sulphur Springs. Contrary to the hopes I expressed, all indications point to a lengthy stay. Doubtless it is, in its own good way, for the best, but I fear it insures us of more terrible battles and another autumn and winter, if not spring and summer campaigns. This delay is on the ground of rest necessary for the army in the heat of August, but I doubt whether the army absolutely needs, or at all desires this rest. My means of observation are very small, and sources of information unreliable; but I fear there is much discontent and dissatisfaction in the army with Meade and with the general management. The army, I can’t but believe, is anxious to go ahead and finish up the war. Some high officers, who have much to say in general, are not so anxious to go ahead or to see the time when their services can be dispensed with and they be reduced from Generals of Volunteers to Captains of regiments, so they do not care to see too much vigor infused into our operations. Meade, of course, is not one of these, but their councils have been felt, for he is junior to several such and a modest and naturally diffident man, who is not yet warm in his seat or thoroughly master in his own house. Hence his Councils of War and the lack of vigor in his operations after the 3d of July. The man’s very good qualities have stood in his way and in ours. He felt inexperienced and the tools felt strange in his hands. Hence much dissatisfaction with him throughout the army, in which McClellan’s name is again freely heard, and I doubt not that Meade’s resignation has, once at least, been tendered. But patience! I for one have faith in Meade; a little time works wonders. He will feel at home next time in his seat, and custom will have made his tools familiar to his hand. We know him to be honest and thoroughly brave and reliable, and he is a good judge of men, having collected already round him young men like Humphreys and Warren — the very best of our army. On the whole, with only patience and no more changes, I do not think we incur any danger by our delay here in Virginia. How it may affect the general prospect, you can tell me. For us, unless genius springs up among them, the rebel army is doomed and desperation alone won’t save them. . . .
