Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father
Camp near Bealeton, Va.
June 8, 1863
My last to you, I believe, was of Sunday, 24th May, and the next morning early we broke camp and again left Potomac Creek, this time let us hope for the last time. I should have been afraid to stay there much longer. The whole country for miles about that vicinity is full of decaying animal matter and one lives in an atmosphere of putrefaction. I had already begun to feel the malaria myself and I am sure that if the army remains there long the systems of the men will become so poisoned that, as at one time on the Peninsula, a man when wounded will always die. We marched away Monday, glad to go and very happy over the news from Vicksburg, which told us more than has since been confirmed. We got that day two thirds of the way to Bealeton, but went into camp early and passed a quiet evening, listening to the Rhode Island band, and finished our journey next morning, establishing ourselves in a beautiful spot in an open oak wood, where we laid out a regular and remarkably pretty camp and disposed ourselves to be comfortable. There we remained until Saturday evening following, having a comparatively quiet time, breathing fresh air and recruiting ourselves and our horses. At times we were subject to alarms and to keeping saddled, but nothing came of them and so we lay on our backs, reading and sleeping and trying to nurse up our horses. Every spot has its troubles, however, and those of our beautiful oak wood were two — orders and bugle-calls and want of water. We were pestered to death by orders for the regulation of our hours — when we should groom and feed and water and graze and drill and every other act which constitutes camp life —until we came to the conclusion that Colonel Duffle, Commander, might be a good man, but he could not run a Division. As for water we could not and never did find any fit for our horses to drink. Still we were very comfortable here, feeding our horses and laying off under the shade of the oak trees. In the mornings I used to feel like a large stock-farmer as I got onto my horse and rode off to the field in which I had had my disabled horses turned out to graze, and there I would ride round and examine them and see to their progress and then return in time for a drill, which would bore me fearfully, and then lay off and read and sleep beneath the oaks.
Saturday evening they turned us out of this, after keeping us in a state of alarm all day. At first we were under orders for Sunday morning and everything was arranged, our horses unsaddled and we going to bed. Then orders came to mount at once and go out on picket and we hastily made our preparations for a night break of camp and a night march. We got under way at about ten o’clock and towards one had reached a point from which our parties were to be sent out, and here we dismounted and presently lay down and went to sleep.
Sunday morning we settled down to our work. My squadron was in reserve and we drew back into the woods, unsaddled and got our breakfasts and began to feel comfortable in the fresh bright Sunday morning. We were thinking of a nap to make up for the last night, when an order came for us to at once withdraw our pickets and return to camp. So we saddled up and started in. By noon we had gotten in and just as our camp came in sight, a messenger came up with new orders for us to go right back and re-establish our line pickets. We gasped in amazement at the management of affairs, but turned round and marched back. At about two we were back at our reserve, and just where we were before, except that our reserve outposts had gone in by a different road and could n’t be found. The result was that at six o’clock I was told that I must take my company and go out and re-establish the line. I did n’t like the job, but there was no help; so once more I started off just at the decline of the day, in a new country and without guides to establish a six mile line of advanced pickets along the Rappahannock from Freeman’s Ford to Sulphur Springs.
Of course I had the usually annoying time. Night came on just as I started from my reserve. To the next ford I had a guide and reached it without difficulty; but as I dismounted to post a vidette and was pointing out the ford, my horse turned round, kicked up his heels and ran away. The last I saw of him he was pelting over a distant hill and my man was laboring after him. Here was an improvement, but it could n’t be helped and I could n’t wait. So I sent a couple of men to try and catch the horse, took another from one of my men and went forward to re-establish our line. Now I had to go by direction. Of course we soon lost our way and found ourselves at large in the fields and woods. Fortunately we had a fine moon and so I pushed along knowing well that I could not get far without hitting on the river, or road, or Sulphur Springs. It was provoking, of course, but one learns to keep cool and go ahead in time, and so now I pushed along through fields and meadows and over hills until at last we struck the river. Then up and down a steep hill, a beautiful moonlight view of a winding river, a mill and a waterfall, seen through the tops of old oaks from a high, bold bluff, and there at our feet lay our second ford and post. Here I established the second party and Sulphur Springs, three miles up, alone remained. To this I sent the remainder of my force, while I went back to my reserve to send up an increased force. I found my way back and my horse had been recovered; so at eleven o’clock I had finished my work and at one the line was re-established.
I remained out on post for the next forty-eight hours. Picket now is a very different thing from picket in January — no more cold hands and feet and utter misery, but now one can be ready and yet comfortable, and we slept near our horses, while a few men kept watch for the bush-whackers, an enemy feared far more by me than the enemy on our front. Monday morning I passed in the woods until noon reading Russell’s Diary “North and South.” How well that book stands time! Russell told the truth mildly and superficially; he neither saw deeply enough to get at the real good in us, nor did he probe the bad as he easily might have done. What a shameful, ludicrous time he records, and yet beneath all that humbug, cowardice and incompetence, which makes me weep and blush as one reads, how grand and heroic we who were there and of those days knew that it was at bottom. The enthusiasm, loyalty, and self-sacrifice of those days, the sudden up-heaving against that which was wrong on the part of a whole great people we felt and knew; but in Russell’s pages we see only the outside incompetence, self-aggrandisement and self-seeking which has so often nearly cost us our cause. This has been the people’s fight, with only obstruction where they should have had help; incompetence, selfishness and dishonesty where they believed in all good qualities; they have found blood and money and have so far carried and are now carrying this struggle through by sheer force in spite of friends and foes. I do admire the people of the North more than I ever did before, and I do believe that history will do credit to their great deeds in this war. . . . Wednesday morning I returned to the grazing business and went in for a quiet day; but at two o’clock an alarm came in from Sulphur Springs and we saddled up in haste. The enemy was crossing in force and skirmishing had begun.
