Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr.
London, November 27, 1863
We received this week your two letters of 29th October and 5th November, for which we were very grateful. Your trials have my earnest sympathy, but I hope they are now drawing to a close. Mr. Lawley’s last letter to the London Times from the rebel army at Chickamauga is chaotic. He says it took him forty hours to go by rail the hundred and thirty miles from Atlanta to Chattanooga, in the filthiest, meanest cars he ever saw. They are wearing out, down there. Do you observe how they have concentrated? They meet us only at points now, and our cavalry cut into their sides and meet no resistance. A few plunges more! Some desperate kicking that will yet disturb our nerves, and I trust the end will come. They are looking for it here, and the worthy British people are turning their eyes away from the gashed and mangled giant whom their aristocracy wished so much to see successful.
Meanwhile you cannot conceive how differently we feel here in these days. There is no longer any perpetual bickering and sharp prodding necessary to exasperate this Government into doing its duty. All is oil and spikenard; attar of roses and eau sucrée. I have n’t succeeded in getting my eyes shut yet at the astounding energy with which they are making war here on the rebel outfits of vessels. Every day I am bewildered by new instances of the radical change of policy. Certainly the rebs put their foot very far into it, when they assumed such a high tone here against the Government, and if their policy is sound, then I’m sorry that their case is so hard. . . .
Meanwhile, the cloud that seems at length to be breaking away and letting sunlight over us, is settling down darker and darker over Europe. England has refused to join the Congress; so that chance is over. I am no Solomon, but such as I am, I read the English reply as the elegy over the entente cordiale. Napoleon must have allies. If England won’t, then who will? Germany won’t; that we know! Italy alone is not enough. Evidently the Emperor has no choice! He must draw up to Russia, and if he and Russia once declare that the Polish question and the Eastern question go hand in hand, and that free Poland means Russian Turkey, then there’ll be the devil to pay in Europe, and you’ll see a row in which the democracy is sure to come up in the end! That is the problem of the day, and I consider that Europe has practically already declared that our rebels must expect no aid or countenance from here, with such emergencies staring kings and aristocracies in the face. . . .
