Henry Adams, private secretary of the US Minister to the UK, to his brother, Charles.
London, October 21, 1864
Our news this week stops with unusual abruptness what promised to be a very remarkable episode. Grant moves like the iron wall in Poe’s story. You expect something tremendous, and it’s only a step after all. Of course the process is all the more sure from its methodical slowness, but it alters the nature of the drama. Here am I puzzling myself to understand why it is that Petersburg does not fall, and when Grant means to take it. For it seems to me that he might now compel its abandonment in several ways. And yet Lee prefers to see us creep nearer and nearer our point, and does not accept what to an outsider seems the necessity of his position. Jeff. Davis’s speech at Macon gives more light on the question than anything else. Of course there may be some inaccuracy in reporting, but his explanations are very reasonable, and his statement about Early’s campaign shows how much he expected from it. That failing to draw Grant away, there seems nothing left but to draw out their resistance to the last moment. But how Lee can cover Meade on three sides, and protect Richmond and the connecting railway too, I can’t quite see. . . .
