Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father
H.Q. Army of Potomac
Cold Harbor, Va., June 4, 1864
Since my last of a week ago I have heard nothing and received nothing from you. Your letters evidently go astray, but where to does not yet appear. Mine was written from near Hanover Town; since then Head Quarters have twice moved, and we now find ourselves the same distance from Richmond, but more to the left and near the scene of McClellan’s disaster at Gaines’s Mills. We are again edging along a system of earthworks to the left, the two armies moving by the flank in parallel lines of battle. This whole country round here presents a most extraordinary spectacle in the matter of entrenchments. You doubtless hear a great deal about rifle pits. These scar the whole country all along the road of these two armies. You see them confronting each other in long lines on every defensible position and you never seem to get through them. A rifle pit, in fact, is in the perfection to which they are now carried in these armies, nothing more nor less than most formidable fortifications, alive with infantry and bristling with artillery. The instant our infantry, for instance, get into position, they go to work with axes and spades and in a very short time there springs up in front of them a wooden barricade, made out of fence rails, felled trees or any material in reach of men who know what danger is and feel it near them; and in rear and front of this a trench is dug, the dirt from the rear being thrown over to the front, so as to bank it up and make it impenetrable to musketry and, except at the top, to artillery. This cover is anywhere from four to six feet high, is often very neatly made, and is regularly bastioned out, as it were, for artillery. As fast as a position is won, it is fortified in this way. For defence the same thing is done. The other day I rode down to the front and passed four lines of these entrenchments, all deserted and useless, before I came to the fifth, where the line of battle then was, which had just been taken from the enemy, and which they were already confronting by a new one. In this country, however, even these pits in the hands of an enemy are rarely seen. This is, as a country, the meanest of the mean — sandy and full of pine barrens, exhausted by man and not attractive by nature, it is sparsely peopled, broken, badly watered, heavily wooded with wretched timber, and wholly uninteresting. In it you can see no enemy, for he is covered by a continual forest. He may be in front in any force, or in almost any kind of works or position, but you cannot see him. There is and can be almost no open fighting here, the party acting on the defensive having always the enormous advantage of cover, which he is not likely to forego.
We crossed the Pamunkey a week ago today and the Army has since been living and fighting in this wretched region. The weather has been very hot and dry, and the dust has accordingly been intense. The men have suffered much in marching and the incessant fatigue and anxiety of the campaign, combined with the unhealthy food, must soon begin to tell on the health of the Army. Meanwhile the fighting has been incessant, the question simply being one of severity. Yesterday we made a general attack and suffered a severe repulse. Today little seems to be going on. The Army all this time seems to be improving in morale. I do not see at any rate so much straggling as I did at Spottsylvania. To be sure the stock of the country seems to suffer badly, and I see more dead pelts than I do live sheep, more feathers by the roads than fowls in the yards; but I no longer see the throngs of stragglers which then used to frighten me. The country however is terribly devastated. This Army is, I presume, no worse than others, but it certainly leaves no friends behind it. I fear that the inhabitants are stripped of everything except that which can neither be stolen or destroyed. This is the work of the stragglers, the shirks and the cowards, the bullies and ruffians of the Army.
As I now move with Head Quarters all my marching is very different from any I ever did before. Grant and Meade usually ride together, and as they ride too fast for me, I send a party to keep along with them and then come up at my leisure. So they push ahead surrounded by a swarm of orderlies and in a cloud of dust, pushing through columns and trains, and I follow as fast as I can. In this way I am forced to see all there is to see of this Army, laboring by long trains of wagons and artillery and interminable columns of infantry, now winding along through the woods by the roadside and now taking to the fields; waiting half an hour for a sufficient break in a column to enable one to cross the road, and at all times wondering over the perfect flood of humanity which flows by me by the hour in the form of a great Army. It is very wearing and tiresome, this always moving in a procession. One gets hot and peevish. Human patience cannot endure such wear and tear. One is greatly impressed at these times with the “pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war.” There is abundance of material to be seen, men and muskets, horses and artillery; but for “pride and pomp,” that is lacking enough! The men look dirty and tired; they toil along in loose, swaying columns and are chiefly remarkable for a most wonderful collection of old felt hats in every stage of dilapidation. Their clothes are torn, dusty and shabby; few carry knapsacks and most confine their luggage to a shelter-tent and blanket which is tied in a coil over one shoulder. There is in the sight of such a column marching much that is picturesque and striking; but such features do not at first appear and never in the shape in which one imagines them.
Grant and Meade usually start about seven o’clock and get into camp at about two. They stop at houses on the road and wait for reports or to consult. I pass much of my time noticing Grant during these halts. For the last few days he has evidently been thinking very hard. I never noticed this before. Formerly he always had a disengaged expression in his face; lately he has had an intent, abstracted look, and as he and Meade sit round on our march I see Grant stroking his beard, puffing at his cigar and whittling at small sticks, but with so abstracted an air that I see well that they are with him merely aids to reflection. In fact as he gets down near Richmond and approaches the solution of his problem, he has need to keep up a devil of a thinking. Yesterday he attacked the enemy and was decidedly repulsed. He always is repulsed when he attacks their works, and so are they when they attack his. The course of the campaign seems to me to have settled pretty decisively that neither of these two armies can, in the field, the one acting defensively and the other offensively, gain any great advantage. Fighting being equal, it becomes therefore a question of generalship. To capture Richmond Grant must do with Lee what he did with Pemberton, he must out-general him and force him to fight him on his own ground. This all of us uninformed think he could accomplish by crossing the James and taking Richmond in the rear, and accordingly we are most eager that that should be done. Grant seems to hesitate to do this and to desire to approach by this side. His reasons of course we do not know, but they yesterday cost this army six thousand men. Feeling that we cannot beat the rebels by hard, point-blank pounding before Richmond, we are most anxious to find ourselves in some position in which they must come out and pound us or give way. The south bank of the James seems to hold out to us hopes of supplies, rest and success, and we are anxiously watching for movements pointing in that direction. While Butler holds Bermuda Hundreds I shall hope that he goes so to keep there a foothold for us, and shall continue to hope for another flank move to the left every day. When it comes I shall look for the crisis of the campaign.
Meanwhile I see nothing to shake my faith in Grant’s ultimate capture of Richmond, and even this delay and yesterday’s false step seem rather like some of the man’s proceedings in the Southwest, when he went on the apparent principle of trying everything, but leaving nothing untried. At present there is one thing to be said of this campaign and its probable future. In it the rebellion will feel the entire strength of the Government exerted to the utmost. If Grant takes Richmond, even without a battle, I think Lee’s army will be essentially destroyed; for they will lose their prestige. The defense of Richmond keeps them alive. They will never again fight as they now do, when once that is lost. Thus to me the campaign seems now to be narrowed down to a question of the capture of Richmond and that to a question of generalship. As to endurance and fighting qualities, the two armies are about equal, all things being considered, and the enemy’s lack of numbers is compensated for by the fact of their acting on the defensive. . . .
