Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his mother
H.Q. Cav’y Escort, A. of P.
Before Petersburg, August 12, 1864
My stay at these Head Quarters and my connection with the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry draws, according to all appearances, towards its close. A day or two since my commission as Lieutenant Colonel of the 5th reached me, and now I only wait for Flint’s return to get leave to go to Washington and immediately afterwards I shall join my colored brethren. . . . I am fortunately once more perfectly well; in fact I have n’t felt better for a year. Thanks to a greater degree of exercise and quinine I have completely gotten rid of my jaundice and the malaria, have a superb appetite and a sufficiency of energy.
I have n’t anything to tell you — no material even the most threadbare for a letter. We are again burned up with drouth and the dust is fetlock deep. I have given up my drills and again we listlessly pass days in camp, contending mainly with flies, looking forward to our meals and still indulging in cool pleasant evenings. In front and along the works it is the same old sky.
As soon as the heat of the day is over the sharpshooters wake up and then, all through the night, until broad day, there is the continual popping of rifles broken by the occasional booming of artillery. A few nights ago I rode out with Colonel Spaulding of the Engineers to look at our works and see the countermining operations which were going on in front of the 5th Corps. Here there is no firing going on between the pickets. At the point where the enemy was supposed to be mining there is only a narrow strip between their works and ours, and the picket line, which is immediately in front of the works, is scarcely a stone’s throw from that of the enemy. Our pickets and theirs however are on the best of terms. They use no concealment and conduct war on Christian principles. As for the enemy’s mining I do not feel much faith in that. Our countermines run the entire front of that fort down to within eighteen inches of water, but as yet no traces of mines are found.
After leaving this quiet front we rode over to the 9th Corps (Burnside), where the difference is striking and unpleasant. Here the cracking of rifles is incessant and whole brigades live under fire. As you approach the line of works through a wood, you ride through a camp every tent of which has one side entrenched —the side towards the enemy — and here chance bullets are z-i-p-p-i-n-g round always all night, and often all day as well. Just beyond these camps are the works where you find the working parties and the soldiers always close under the cover of the outer wall, as that is the only place where chance balls do not come. I can’t say that I was sorry to leave Burnside’s front, and we trotted briskly away amid the usual accompaniment of bullets rattling through the trees. All these works, immense in size and elaborately constructed, with sand-bags, gabions and fascines without number, the miles of covered way, rifle-pits and trenches, ingenious abattis, and powerful palisades, and all the rest of the engineering jargon, seem to have been built by us to be abandoned. Already our line has once been contracted and enormous works have been levelled, and now we are constructing a new interior line of defences, without stint of labor or ingenuity, in favor of which the works now constituting our front, from which the guns are already removed, are to be destroyed and we are to clew yet a few yards further away from Petersburg. From all this I draw confirmation of the inference in my last letter to London, that active operations here are over for the present. The new and interior line is probably a very powerful one, and one which a small force could hold. Two Army Corps could probably hold this line from the James River to the head waters of the Black-water, and this would leave yet three more of the Corps still here free to operate elsewhere. I doubt if we have any extensive operations in this region before the middle of September. Meanwhile Grant doubtless hopes for good news from the southwest, and with Atlanta and Mobile in our hands, we might certainly begin a fall campaign here with renewed hope. . . .
