Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father
Camp of the 5th Mass. Cav’y
Point Lookout, Md., December 31, 1864
I am writing to you in the very last hours of the year. As it passes away I find myself looking back over its events. Whomever else it has mis-used and left the worse for its events, it certainly was a pleasant, kind and beneficent year to me. It came to me full-handed; it was to me, in my small sphere, a year of almost unmixed success. In it whatever I aimed at was accomplished. To be sure my mark was not high but I struck it. My sphere is so small, and now so isolated, that I doubt if even you can trace the causes of my satisfaction. It is worth going over my record, if only to renew pleasant associations. Just as the year began I was looking forward to my visit to you, so long the pleasant dream which made hardship bearable, as a thing hoped for long and now, perhaps, to be realised. While its realisation was yet a question, my Company, and mine alone of the regiment, enlisted anew, and when the dream was realised, I went home almost in triumph. Then came Europe and the rest from labors. When my vacation was over and the old life of hardship, now rendered doubly hard in contemplation and almost unbearable by contrast with the present, when this again stared me in the face, then I made one little effort, just pulled one little wire, and again my whole scene changed. The terrible campaign which killed so many of my friends and was one succession of increasing hardships and privations to those whom it spared, was to me a summer picnic and pleasure excursion. Presently, unsought by me and undesired, came offers of promotion. When accepted by me I did not come to my regiment empty handed. I brought them their horses, and again my attempt had been successful. Then, in October, I thought I would like to go home, and November saw me at Quincy. Now, as the year is closing, I have just gotten back, and I think you will agree with me that ’64 came to me full handed and has been to me a pleasant and a prosperous year. The events of the coming year I, for one, seek not to foresee. So far my share of happiness and success has been allotted to me and I hope to go on in the faith that all blessings were not expended in the past, and that the power which has so well looked after that, will supply its cakes and ale in due quantity also in the future. . . .
