Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr.
London, October 2, 1863
The Scotia’s telegram has just arrived, and for an hour or two past, I have been reflecting on the news it brings of what I conceive to be a very severe defeat of Rosecrans. At this distance and with our mere scraps of doubtful intelligence, I am painfully impressed with the conviction that our Government has been again proved incompetent, and has neglected to take those measures of security which it ought to have done, expecting as we all did, just this movement, or the corresponding one on Washington. I imagine that this mischance insures us another year of war, unless the army of the Potomac shows more energy than usual and more success than ever yet. The truth is, everything in this universe has its regular waves and tides. Electricity, sound, the wind, and I believe every part of organic nature will be brought some day within this law. But my philosophy teaches me, and I firmly believe it, that the laws which govern animated beings will be ultimately found to be at bottom the same with those which rule inanimate nature, and, as I entertain a profound conviction of the littleness of our kind, and of the curious enormity of creation, I am quite ready to receive with pleasure any basis for a systematic conception of it all. Thus (to explain this rather alarming digression) as sort of experimentalist, I look for regular tides in the affairs of man, and of course, in our own affairs. In every progression, somehow or other, the nations move by the same process which has never been explained but is evident in the ocean and the air. On this theory I should expect at about this time, a turn which would carry us backward. The devil of it is, supposing there comes a time when the rebs suddenly cave in, how am I to explain that!
This little example of my unpractical experimento-philosophico-historico-progressiveness will be enough. It suffices to say that I am seeking to console my trouble by chewing the dry husks of that philosophy which, whether it calls itself submission to the will of God, or to the laws of nature, rests in bottom simply and solely upon an acknowledgment of our own impotence and ignorance. In this amusement I find, if not consolation at least some sort of mental titillation. Besides, I am becoming superstitious. I believe Nick Anderson’s killed. Write me that he’s not yet gone under, and I will say defiance to the vague breath of similar chimaeras. . . .
