Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father
Camp of 1st Mass. Cav’y
Amissville, Va., August 2, 1863
So it is in campaign, if an officer would do his work —day after day in the saddle, up early, late in camp; then a couple of mails with a dozen letters marked official and two private ones; demands for returns, appeals from the families of men dead, or from the sick and wounded; then a day’s rest and at once the company books are brought out and its clerks set to work, and the sabre yields to the pen. Yesterday from morning to night I was as busy as I knew how to be. I wrote six letters — all business — and made out or caused to be made out and signed well nigh innumerable reports, descriptive lists and papers generally. It is really quite a vexation. In camp ten minutes a day will keep a company commander up with his work on paper; but in the field it accumulates so much that when a rare day of quiet comes he has to work harder than ever I worked on a quarter day in my office. My arrears are not yet made up, but I am too sensible of the extreme regularity of your letters to me to omit sending a note to you as often as I can take out a pen.
We are all well, I believe, or at least I am. In fact, never since I have been in the Army have I been so well as during the last month, but my companions are growing beautifully small as one by one they leave or play out. A year ago the 22d of this month this regiment landed in Virginia. Of all the officers we then had I am the only one who has always been with the regiment in all its active service and in every march and action from that time to the present, and, of all those officers, but six, including Colonel Sargent who returned yesterday, are with us now; of the officers who came up from Hilton Head only three. In fact, in eight companies there are but five line officers left for duty now; but then the companies are small, as mine, for instance, which puts fourteen troopers all told in the squadron ranks. Promotion is rapid in the Union army.
