“Empire City,” Off Port Royal
Friday, January, 1862
We are just making harbor on the fifth day out, after a decidedly rough and long passage. We ought to have got in yesterday, but missed the harbor and for the last twenty-four hours have been cruising up and down the coast, in a northeaster, between Tybee island and Charleston light, and will barely get in today. The voyage has been very severe on our horses which look most decidedly used up, and a fair average of men have been down and could fully describe the pleasures of seasickness — as also could most of the officers, including myself, who passed the second day out on my back, but since then have picked up sufficiently to be on my feed, drink, and smoke, and round while my bed is made. We have left the winter fairly behind us and now in a couple of days we shall settle down at Beaufort, but what to do, the Lord only knows. . . .
You set up for a philosopher. You write letters à la Horace Walpole; you talk of loafing round Europe; you pretend to have seen life. Such twaddle makes me feel like a giant Warrington talking to an infant Pendennis. You “tired of this life”! You more and more “callous and indifferent about your own fortunes!” Pray how old are you and what has been your career? You graduate and pass two years in Europe, and witness by good luck a revolution. You come home and fall upon great historic events and have better chances than any young man to witness and become acquainted with them. You go abroad while great questions are agitated in a position to know all about them. Fortune has done nothing but favor you and yet you are “tired of this life.” You are beaten back everywhere before you are twenty-four, and finally writing philosophical letters you grumble at the strange madness of the times and have n’t even faith in God and the spirit of your age. What do you mean by thinking, much less writing such stuff? “No longer any chance left of settled lives and Christian careers!” Do you suppose the world is coming to an end now? Had n’t you better thank God that your lot is cast in great times? How am I throwing myself away? Is n’t a century’s work of my ancestors worth a struggle to preserve? Am I likely to do so much that it won’t do for me to risk my precious life in this great struggle? Come — no more of this. Don’t get into this vein again, or if you do, keep it to yourself. . . . We shall come out all right and if we don’t, the world will. Excuse me if I have been rough, but it will do you good. . . .
We are just taking a pilot on board off Hilton Head and in a few hours we shall sully the soil of Carolina. Ah, would n’t I like to ride into Charleston! I don’t know when you will hear from me again, but perhaps my letters will come as regularly as ever. We shall be very busy and hard at work for some time and may soon see service. I well know how eagerly the news from Port Royal will be wished for in the breakfast room of the Legation at London. Meanwhile I am very well and in very good spirits and look forward to having a very pleasant time, though very monotonous and so keep the parents easy. . . .
We have just arrived at Hilton Head and come to anchor. We are going up to Beaufort tomorrow. Weather delicious and all well….
