Adams Family Civil War letters; US Minister to the UK and his sons.

Charles Francis Adams to his son

London, August 24, 1863

I am sure I heartily join you in the wish that this fearful conflict was over. No more wanton and wicked struggle was ever initiated by profligate and desperate men than this against a government which had only been too lenient and generous to them. A terrible retribution has fallen upon them, it is true; but the mischief is that it has brought with it much of calamity to those who had no share of the responsibility for bringing it on. I cannot now see how the war can be safely ended until the motive which led to its commencement is made to vanish. I am made an abolitionist as earnest for immediate action as any one. The President can really effect the thing under the war power, as a condition of pacification in the ultimate resort. He can bring on that resort by a general arming of all the blacks. He has the power in his hands. There is no time to be lost, for he may be anticipated by a combination of the repentant class of slave owners with their old democratic allies of the north to attempt to re-establish the Union as it was. This is the last avenue of escape from the natural consequences of the war. I fancy these men will not have the shrewdness to avail themselves of it in season. Not that I doubt the fact that in any event slavery is doomed. The only difference will be that in dying it may cause us another sharp convulsion, which we might avoid by finishing it now. . . .

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his Mother

Camp of the 1st Mass. Cav’y
Sulphur Springs, August 9, 1863

They ‘re not very unlike us and really pleasant, sociable men — their cavalry, now that we have whipped them out of their conceit. There’s much better feeling between Yankees and Southerners now than there ever was before, and now we meet on very pleasant terms.

Not so with the non-combatants, only! don’t they hate us? and I must say with cause. Everywhere war is horrid — no more so here than elsewhere, and we are not so bad as other nations, as we see from the fact that of all our troops the Germans, as ruffians, thieves and scourges, are most terribly dreaded by all natives of Virginia. They say they don’t fear the Cavalry, but they dread the Infantry and the Germans. They turn pale at the name of the 11th Corps. As for me, I can only say if they don’t fear the cavalry, I don’t want to see those they do fear, as I see only Cavalry, and I daily see from them acts of pillage and outrage on the poor and defenceless which make my hair stand on end and cause me to loathe all war. We owe a high debt to Colonel Williams for the high stand he took on this subject in our regiment, a stand at the start which enables us now, amidst universal demoralization and pillage around us, to hold our men substantially in check. Poor Virginia! She has drunk deep of the cup and today she is draining the last bitter dregs. Her fighting men have been slaughtered; her old men have been ruined; her women and children are starving and outraged; her servants have run away or been stolen; her fields have been desolated; her towns have been depopulated. The most bitter against Virginia would, were they here, say it was enough. They have come to be thankful for a little thing at last. It was sad enough the other day when I was on picket out here. Kilpatrick’s ruffians had just gone through the country when we came out and relieved them, and presently I was sent down to Hazel River with my squadron. The first day an old woman came groaning up and said that my men were chasing her four sheep, all that she had left. I told her I would see to it, but meanwhile two of the four were gone. I ordered all killing of stock at once to stop, and did it savagely, for the old woman bored me. Early next morning up she panted again. Two of my men were chasing the two sheep left. Hereat I had roll-calls and cursed and swore and denounced vengeance on the first man I could catch, but I could n’t fix on any one. Meanwhile I thought things were getting as bad in this regiment as in the others and felt rather ashamed of myself. That evening the old woman sent me a present of butter and milk. I remarked to Flint “coals of fire” and sent her back some sugar. But next day she hobbled into camp and the truth came out, the bitter truth. Far from being coals of fire the milk and butter was an expression of gratitude to be continued every evening while I remained, and oh! she did “hope I was n’t going away; my men behaved so well, she felt so safe with them there. She was seventy-four years old, but those who had been there before had broken into her house in the night, and broken into her closets and drawers, and stolen all her meat and provisions, and abused and threatened her; and she had n’t been able to sleep for nights, and last night, when she heard that I was there she had slept so well, and she did hope I was going to stay,” and so on, from which I discovered that she thought it first rate treatment that my men only killed her sheep and did n’t rifle her dwelling and beat her. And this is the Cavalry which the Virginians say they’re “not afraid of”; only the Infantry and (a shudder) “the Germans.” It’s awful here now in these respects and this country is just going to be cleaned out. As for me I expect we shall earn a lofty reputation as philanthropists if we only allow our men to take horses and cattle. One of the charges against McClellan was that he gave guards to the houses of prominent Virginians. He never did anything of which he has more cause to be proud, and those who advance that against him as a charge are either demons or ignoramuses in the horrors of war. If I could have my say there should be a guard at every house and barn within the lines of the army, and the taking an article of property from any, even the most offensively outspoken, rebel, should be instantly punished by death. I would also punish straggling with death. I would do this on strictly humane principles. The horrors of war are not all to be found in the battle-field and every army pillages and outrages to a terrible extent. By establishing guards and making straggling the highest military offense, you not only divest war of its main horrors, so far as all noncombatants are concerned, but you stop the greatest cause of demoralisation in all armies, and, by keeping men in the ranks, bring your whole force effectively before the enemy. In the Maryland campaign last year McClellan’s army left behind 12,000 fighting men — stragglers, plundering the land. So it goes. Traditionally I rate Cromwell’s army above any other in history because in those respects he had it so completely in hand; but, as a rule, the English are very brutal and bad in those respects. Napoleon’s army lived on pillage, but did not straggle. They say the Germans are the worst and most cruel of all, as vide the thirty years war. . . .

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams

August 8, 1863. Sulphur Springs
(continuation of letter started August 2)

A little tour of picket has cut the thread of my letter. I went out early Monday morning and got in yesterday at noon. By the way, that reminds me of the conversation you mention you had with Sir Edward Cust, in which he spoke with pleasure of picket. The General’s memory does not betray him. Summer picket is the pleasantest work we have to do, and is really charming. Winter picketing is terrible, and neither he nor any man can extract any pleasure from it. I hardly had my share fall to me last winter, but I did enough. A cold, snowy day, followed by fourteen hours of night, during which miserable men, with numb fingers and freezing feet, sit motionless on jaded horses, ever listening for an enemy who will not come except when he is n’t expected, is no idea of mine of pleasure. Summer is very different. During the last week I have been picketing the Hazel River, just above its junction with the Rappahannock. The weather has been very fine, hot, but glorious for August. The enemy was just the other side of the river and just active enough to keep up one’s excitement, and my command was an independent one of about 150 men. At the fords the enemy were disposed to be very sociable, and as the river was hardly ten yards broad, nothing but orders interfered with our intercourse. Here, away from the nuisance of the infantry, we again got milk and eggs and butter, chickens, pigs and sheep, and we lived better than we have for many a day. The anxiety wears a little on one, for though one soon gets accustomed to the proximity of the enemy, the necessity of continued vigilance and perpetual preparation gets wearisome at last. Still it is very pleasant, this getting away from camps, brigades and infantry, away from orders, details and fatigue duty, out to the front with no army near, the enemy before you and all quiet along your line.

I was quite interested in what you reported General Cust as saying of the European cavalry, and it rather surprised me. I knew the Germans were good, but so I thought were the English also. We ourselves however come up to his mark of excellence in the Germans in the care of our horses; at least in our regiment, which is rather exceptional in most respects. If we are to march at sunrise we are called before the first break of day. Immediately after reveille roll-call the horses are groomed and then fed. The men then get their breakfasts. We march in columns of fours or, if the road is narrow, twos, and by squadrons. We even in spite of hard work keep up some finery. Ah, what a squadron I had on the morning of the 17th of June!! Any man might have been proud of it. First rides the chief of squadron and immediately behind him are the four bugles, mounted on their white horses and with their trumpets slung over their shoulders. Then comes the first chief of platoon, by the side of the Sergeant guide, and then the column, in closed up ranks of fours. In the rear the 2d Captain. On the march no man is allowed to fall out or straggle, without the permission of the 2d Captain, and in my squadron this rule is rigidly enforced. We rarely halt during our march and average usually three miles an hour. We have few rules of dress, simply enforcing dark hats or caps and dark blue blouses, with light blue trousers; but, I am sorry to say that in all these respects our regiment is far ahead of the average of our cavalry, which, while it straggles through a country like a cloud of locusts, looks like a mob of ruffians, and fights and forages like a horde of Cossacks. I speak now of the mass. The regulars are better and some of the volunteers, but the mass of the last would excite the special wonder and extreme mirth of European officers of the line until they met them in campaign. Nothing is known of our cavalry abroad, and it is only just now rising into a system; but some day when I have leisure I don’t know but I’ll write you a letter about them for the edification of Sir Edward and his friends in the English army. . . .

We are encamped just south of the Rappahannock at Sulphur Springs. Contrary to the hopes I expressed, all indications point to a lengthy stay. Doubtless it is, in its own good way, for the best, but I fear it insures us of more terrible battles and another autumn and winter, if not spring and summer campaigns. This delay is on the ground of rest necessary for the army in the heat of August, but I doubt whether the army absolutely needs, or at all desires this rest. My means of observation are very small, and sources of information unreliable; but I fear there is much discontent and dissatisfaction in the army with Meade and with the general management. The army, I can’t but believe, is anxious to go ahead and finish up the war. Some high officers, who have much to say in general, are not so anxious to go ahead or to see the time when their services can be dispensed with and they be reduced from Generals of Volunteers to Captains of regiments, so they do not care to see too much vigor infused into our operations. Meade, of course, is not one of these, but their councils have been felt, for he is junior to several such and a modest and naturally diffident man, who is not yet warm in his seat or thoroughly master in his own house. Hence his Councils of War and the lack of vigor in his operations after the 3d of July. The man’s very good qualities have stood in his way and in ours. He felt inexperienced and the tools felt strange in his hands. Hence much dissatisfaction with him throughout the army, in which McClellan’s name is again freely heard, and I doubt not that Meade’s resignation has, once at least, been tendered. But patience! I for one have faith in Meade; a little time works wonders. He will feel at home next time in his seat, and custom will have made his tools familiar to his hand. We know him to be honest and thoroughly brave and reliable, and he is a good judge of men, having collected already round him young men like Humphreys and Warren — the very best of our army. On the whole, with only patience and no more changes, I do not think we incur any danger by our delay here in Virginia. How it may affect the general prospect, you can tell me. For us, unless genius springs up among them, the rebel army is doomed and desperation alone won’t save them. . . .

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams

Camp of 1st Mass. Cav’y
Amissvilie, Va., August 2, 1863

Your letters have reached me of late slowly, but tolerably surely and you cannot imagine how welcome they have been. John is the only person on this side of the water who ever writes to me now, and he is not very regular. Lou has not written me a line since the 1st of May. Of course I well know that writing to me now is a labor of love and a decidedly unequal bargain, for I have neither time nor conveniences to do my share in a correspondence; but on the other hand letters are more than ever before prized by me, for now they constitute absolutely my only link with the world and my own past, and moreover my only pleasure. After long marches and great exposure, when you have been forced to drag your tired body up onto your tired horse day after day; when you have been hungry, thirsty and tired, and after breakfasting before sunrise have gone supperless to sleep in a rain storm long after night; when you have gone through all that man can go through, except the worst of all sufferings — cold —then to get into camp at last and hear that a mail has come! People at home don’t know what it is. You should see the news fly round the camp and the men’s faces light up, and how duty, discipline, everything, at once gives way to the reading of the letters. It’s like fresh water in an August noon; and yet of all my family and friends you in London, and now and then John, are the only living souls who ever do more than just answer my letters to them. But you are all models of thoughtfulness in this respect and, while you will never know how much pleasure your letters have given me, I can never express to you how much their regularity has touched and gratified me.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father

Camp of 1st Mass. Cav’y
Amissville, Va., August 2, 1863

So it is in campaign, if an officer would do his work —day after day in the saddle, up early, late in camp; then a couple of mails with a dozen letters marked official and two private ones; demands for returns, appeals from the families of men dead, or from the sick and wounded; then a day’s rest and at once the company books are brought out and its clerks set to work, and the sabre yields to the pen. Yesterday from morning to night I was as busy as I knew how to be. I wrote six letters — all business — and made out or caused to be made out and signed well nigh innumerable reports, descriptive lists and papers generally. It is really quite a vexation. In camp ten minutes a day will keep a company commander up with his work on paper; but in the field it accumulates so much that when a rare day of quiet comes he has to work harder than ever I worked on a quarter day in my office. My arrears are not yet made up, but I am too sensible of the extreme regularity of your letters to me to omit sending a note to you as often as I can take out a pen.

We are all well, I believe, or at least I am. In fact, never since I have been in the Army have I been so well as during the last month, but my companions are growing beautifully small as one by one they leave or play out. A year ago the 22d of this month this regiment landed in Virginia. Of all the officers we then had I am the only one who has always been with the regiment in all its active service and in every march and action from that time to the present, and, of all those officers, but six, including Colonel Sargent who returned yesterday, are with us now; of the officers who came up from Hilton Head only three. In fact, in eight companies there are but five line officers left for duty now; but then the companies are small, as mine, for instance, which puts fourteen troopers all told in the squadron ranks. Promotion is rapid in the Union army.

Charles Francis Adams to His Son

London, July 31, 1863

It is intensely painful in the midst of such great prosperity here to read the shocking details of slaughter and destruction in our newspapers. Still more annoying is it to think how by the folly of these rogues we are playing into the hands of the malevolent in Europe. The privileged classes all over Europe rejoice in the thoughts of the ruin of the great experiment of popular government. I yet trust they count without their host. No thanks, however, to the madmen who try to work this mischief. The penalty we are paying for the great error of our ancestors is a most tremendous one. All I can pray for is that we do so once for all. To permit our posterity to run the risk of repeating it for the same fault on our part would be criminal indeed.

The London Times last Monday graciously allowed the people of England to believe that Vicksburg had actually fallen. The notion that General Lee was in possession of Washington and Baltimore is not quite so strong as it was, but I am not sure that it has been dissipated yet by any positive denial in that press. There was a general sense of the happening of some lamentable disaster here, the nature and extent of which had not been fully defined. The clearest evidence of this was found in the stock market, where a panic took place among the holders of the rebel loan. It fell from three per cent discount to seventeen, and has not stopped yet. I should not be surprised if some bankruptcies were to follow. People here must pay something for their pro-slavery sympathies. What a pity that the sum of their losses could not have been applied to the emancipation of the slaves! In that case England would have maintained her character for philanthropy, which has gone down, as it is, quite as far and as fast as the rebel loan. . . .

Charles Francis Adams to His Son

London, July 24, 1863

The last steamers brought us startling intelligence. Vicksburg fallen! There has been nothing like it since New Orleans. One was the complement of the other. It sounds the knell of the confederation scheme. Great has been the disappointment and consternation here! Just at the moment, too, when they were hoping and believing its complete establishment and recognition at hand. Could anything be more provoking. The Salons of this great metropolis are in tears; tears of anger mixed with grief. They moreover refuse to be comforted. They madly struggle with the event, denying that it was possible. Fate cannot be so cruel!

Mr. Seward was kind enough to send me a special telegram announcing the event, which reached me at breakfast on Sunday morning. I tried to bear up under the intelligence with a suitable degree of moderation. Not having any idea how deeply our English friends would take it to heart, I ventured to indulge a slight sense of satisfaction. Fortunately I went to church in the city, where nobody knew me, and therefore nobody could be scandalised. It would have been hard on them, you know, to be joyful in the midst of their sorrow. Doubtless they would have been as much offended as they showed themselves on reading my famous letter exposing their secret practises. I took care to look resigned. The only persons whom I met were Americans, excepting perhaps Mr. Browning, and to him as to them I disclosed my secret. He, like them, appeared not to be depressed, but rather elated. Luckily, there was nobody at hand to mark the impropriety.

Five days have passed away. Another steamer has brought intelligence quite confirmatory, but not sufficient to overcome the determined incredulity that has succeeded the first shock. I recollect it was very much so with New Orleans. The only difference was that the passions had not then become so deeply enlisted in the struggle. . . .

Parliament is just now coming to an end. This is the third session since the breaking out of our troubles, and its position has not yet been essentially varied towards America. On looking back and remembering how I felt on each return of the body, it seems to me as if we had reason for gratulation that we are yet in peace with this country. The great causes of apprehension have died away. The cotton famine and Lancashire distress have not proved such serious troubles as we had feared. Great Britain has not in her domestic condition any cause to seek for violent or extraordinary remedial measures. The country is highly prosperous. I am well pleased that it should remain so, if it will only consent to indulge its predilections and its lamentations in words addressed to the empty air. Vox, et praeterea nihil!

Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr.

[London,] July 23, 1863

I positively tremble to think of receiving any more news from America since the batch that we received last Sunday. Why can’t we sink the steamers till some more good news comes? It is like an easterly storm after a glorious June day, this returning to the gloomy chronicle of varying successes and disasters, after exulting in the grand excitement of such triumphs as you sent us on the 4th. For once there was no drawback, unless I except anxiety about you. I wanted to hug the army of the Potomac. I wanted to get the whole of the army of Vicksburg drunk at my own expense. I wanted to fight some small man and lick him. Had I had a single friend in London capable of rising to the dignity of the occasion, I don’t know what might n’t have happened. But mediocrity prevailed and I passed the day in base repose.

It was on Sunday morning as I came down to breakfast that I saw a telegram from the Department announcing the fall of Vicksburg. Now, to appreciate the value of this, you must know that the one thing upon which the London press and the English people have been so positive as not to tolerate contradiction, was the impossibility of capturing Vicksburg. Nothing could induce them to believe that Grant’s army was not in extreme danger of having itself to capitulate. The Times of Saturday, down to the last moment, declared that the siege of Vicksburg grew more and more hopeless every day. Even now, it refuses, after receiving all the details, to admit the fact, and only says that Northern advices report it, but it is not yet confirmed. Nothing could exceed the energy with which everybody in England has reprobated the wicked waste of life that must be caused by the siege of this place during the sickly season, and ridiculed the idea of its capture. And now the announcement was just as though a bucket of iced-water were thrown into their faces. They could n’t and wouldn’t believe it. All their settled opinions were overthrown, and they were left dangling in the air. You never heard such a cackling as was kept up here on Sunday and Monday, and you can’t imagine how spiteful and vicious they all were. Sunday evening I was asked round to Monckton Milnes’ to meet a few people. Milnes’ himself is one of the warmest Americans in the world, and received me with a hug before the astonished company, crowing like a fighting cock. But the rest of the company were very cold. W. H. Russell was there, and I had a good deal of talk with him. He at least did not attempt to disguise the gravity of the occasion, nor to turn Lee’s defeat into a victory. I went with Mr. Milnes to the Cosmopolitan Club afterwards, where the people all looked at me as though I were objectionable. Of course I avoided the subject in conversation, but I saw very clearly how unpleasant the news was which I brought. So it has been everywhere. This is a sort of thing that can be neither denied, palliated, nor evaded; the disasters of the rebels are unredeemed by even any hope of success. Accordingly the emergency has produced here a mere access of spite, preparatory (if we suffer no reverse) to a revolution in tone.

It is now conceded at once that all idea of intervention is at an end. The war is to continue indefinitely, so far as Europe is concerned, and the only remaining chance of collision is in the case of the iron-dads. We are looking after them with considerable energy, and I think we shall settle them.

It is utterly impossible to describe to you the delight that we all felt here and that has not diminished even now. I can imagine the temporary insanity that must have prevailed over the North on the night of the 7th. Here our demonstrations were quiet, but, ye Gods, how we felt! Whether to laugh or to cry, one hardly knew. Some men preferred the one, some the other. The Chief was the picture of placid delight. As for me, as my effort has always been here to suppress all expression of feeling, I preserved sobriety in public, but for four days I’ve been internally singing Hosannahs and running riot in exultation. The future being doubtful, we are all the more determined to drink this one cup of success out. Our friends at home, Dana, John, and so on, are always so devilish afraid that we may see things in too rosy colors. They think it necessary to be correspondingly sombre in their advices. This time, luckily, we had no one to be so cruel as to knock us down from behind, when we were having all we could do to fight our English upas influence in front. We sat on the top of the ladder and did n’t care a copper who passed underneath. Your old friend Judge Goodrich was here on Monday, and you never saw a man in such a state. Even for him it was wonderful. He lunched with us and kept us in a perfect riot all the time, telling stories without limit and laughing till he almost screamed.

I am sorry to say, however, that all this is not likely to make our position here any pleasanter socially. All our experience has shown that as our success was great, so rose equally the spirit of hatred on this side. Never before since the Trent affair has it shown itself so universal and spiteful as now. I am myself more surprised at it than I have any right to be, and philosopher though I aspire to be, I do feel strongly impressed with a desire to see the time come when our success will compel silence and our prosperity will complete the revolution. As for war, it would be folly in us to go to war with this country. We have the means of destroying her without hurting ourselves.

In other respects the week has been a very quiet one. The season is over. The streets are full of Pickford’s vans carting furniture from the houses, and Belgravia and May Fair are the scene of dirt and littered straw, as you know them from the accounts of Pendennis. One night we went to the opera, but otherwise we have enjoyed peace, and I have been engaged in looking up routes and sights in the guide book of Scotland. Thither, if nothing prevents and no bad news or rebel plot interferes, we shall wend our way on the first of August. The rest of the family will probably make a visit or two, and I propose to make use of the opportunity to go on with Brooks and visit the Isle of Skye and the Hebrides, if we can. This is in imitation of Dr. Johnson, and I’ve no doubt, if we had good weather, it would be very jolly. But as for visiting people, the truth is I feel such a dislike for the whole nation, and so keen a sensitiveness to the least suspicion of being thought to pay court to any of them, and so abject a dread of ever giving any one the chance to put a slight upon me, that I avoid them and neither wish them to be my friends nor wish to be theirs. I have n’t the strength of character to retain resentments long, and some day in America I may astonish myself by defending these people for whom I entertain at present only a profound and lively contempt. But at present I am glad that my acquaintances are so few and I do not intend to increase the number.

You will no doubt be curious to know, if, as I say, I have no acquaintances, how I pass my time. Certainly I do pass it, however, and never have an unoccupied moment. My candles are seldom out before two o’clock in the morning, and my table is piled with half-read books and unfinished writing. For weeks together I only leave the house to mount my horse and after my ride, come back as I went. If it were not for your position and my own uneasy conscience, I should be as happy as a Virginia oyster, and as it is, I believe I never was so well off physically, morally and intellectually as this last year.

I send you another shirt and a copy of the Index, the southern organ, which I thought you would find more interesting this week than any other newspaper I can send. It seems to me to look to a cessation of organized armed resistance and an ultimate resort to the Polish fashion. I think we shall not stand much in their way there, if they like to live in a den of thieves.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father

Camp of the 1st Mass. Cavy Hillsboro, Va., July 22, 1863

Here we are and we enjoy this as more of a settled rest than we have had since the 30th of May. So I pulled out your old letters and read them over, re-read them with Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Port Hudson and Morris Island still ringing in my ears, and with our wondrous successes of July absorbing my thoughts. Does Europe want more? If it does I think it will get more, but I am lost in astonishment at the strength the North is developing. Can the South stand up against it? War is a dangerous game and the South has all that desperate courage which makes one a majority; so, while there is a single chance left I feel no safety. But for the last few days I had dwelt much during long marches on our relative positions as compared with two years ago. Two years ago at this time we fought the stampede of Bull-Run, and the two years that have passed have proved exactly the time necessary to develop our strength. Do you realise what prodigious victories we have won this summer? Men and money are the sinews of war. While we have reduced gold fifty per cent in five months, we have settled the question of a negro soldiery, and at last enforced the draft, thus opening an unlimited supply of recruits. Two years have thus brought us to just what we never had before, plenty of money and plenty of men. The negro regiment question is our greatest victory of the war so far, and, I can assure you, that in the army, these are so much of a success that they will soon be the fashion. General Andrews, formerly of the 2nd Massachusetts and one of the bravest and most reliable officers in the service, is organizing a corps of these soldiers in South Carolina, and he writes to officers here that, though he went out with all a conservative’s prejudices against their use, he has seen them do well under indifferent officers and he is confident that under good officers they will make troops equal to the best. This is a great deal from Andrews. I almost wish I had gone into that movement, but perhaps it’s just as well.

As to the conscription, the army is delighted with that and only regrets that it had no chance to discuss the matter with the gentlemen of New York. We, who have borne the heat and burden of the day, are tired and disgusted at seeing men bought by immense bounties, leaving home one day to return a hero the next, ovations to regiments with unthinned ranks. The three years men received no bounty. Now we do so much want to see all those who kiss our Lady Peace at home come in for a share of our laurels. So the army feels none the less pleased because it sees an iron hand on the rioters at home.

But having finished with our moral victories, I have not begun on our physical. Probably I can tell you little about those except that I really at last believe that we are learning to outfight the rebels on even fields, in spite of their dash and fanatical desperation. Does Europe want more? Europe however seems to me now out of the question. I may look at these things from too much of an army point of view, just as you take everything from your London watch-tower; but it does now seem to me that if any European nation, and especially England, and next to her France, wants hard knocks with little gain, they need only to meddle with us. Two years ago our soldiers would have dreaded foreign armies and especially French ” Zouayes.” That’s played out. If the Mexicans can make a fight, we can win a victory. Eighty thousand French soldiers might now make an impression through a campaign which would use them up; but in case of a war with us the whole English standing army could not save Canada from being overrun. How I would like to raid it through Canada, and how we would astonish the regular cavalry of Europe.

You will laugh at all this and say: “Why, victory has turned his head! How he does crow!! And that too before he’s out of the woods.” Not at all. It is not success in the field which delights me, it is feeling and seeing the strength behind me which this rebellion has just sufficed to call forth. Europe looked to see us exhausted and calling for mediation, without money and without recruits, and behold! the whole African race comes forward to fill our ranks at just the moment when by a wise conscription we are for the first time strong enough without them, and all this time the very war which was to destroy us reduces gold from 175 to 125. At last, oh Lord! at last!! Three months ago powerful and energetic foreign intervention would have saved Vicksburg to the South, cost us New Orleans and cost us the Mississippi. Today we have all these and will not lose them easily and, if European nations care to interfere, they may injure us in a small degree as we shall injure them; but, thank God! we have secured the material issues of this great struggle. For the rest I would the South East might have its own way and depart in peace. I am tired equally of them and of this war.

You cannot tell how I long to hear from you and to know how all this affects you in London. I know it must make you very happy, but how does it affect you socially? . . .

July 23

As we still continue here I may as well lucubrate a little further. I notice that you and Henry dwell a great deal upon the apparent exhaustion of the rebel resources and their lack of men and supplies. As I yesterday dwelt on our successes, I will today give my experiences on their reverses, and that experience is by no means that of the newspaper reporters. I have lately seen and talked with considerable numbers of rebel prisoners, beside passing over some rebel territory, and that, too, in “desolated” Virginia. That the rebels have no money or currency is very apparent, but I see no evidence that they are either starving or destitute. Wherever we have been in Virginia we find cattle and corn in abundance, and the people seem comfortable. We find few men and few blacks but no suffering. I see that all accounts agree in placing the flower of the rebel army in Virginia. This may well be, for finer fighting material it would be hard to find. I am struck by their immensely improved condition since a year ago at Antietam. Judging by my means of observation, and I saw great numbers of prisoners, having myself at one time charge of a squad of five hundred from every Southern State, I should say that Lee’s army at Gettysburg was in every respect superior to the Army of the Potomac, superior in numbers, better officered, a better fighting material, as well armed, better clothed and as well fed. The spirit of his army was much better than that of ours, and I saw no evidence of their ever having been on short rations or demoralised by want or misfortune. Their tone was the very best. All said they were sick of the war, but scouted the idea of going home or giving it up until they had won their cause. I must say my opinion of the confederates and Southrons improved on near acquaintance in the early days of July.

You will ask why we were not defeated then at Gettysburg? We just escaped it by the skin of our teeth and the strength of our position. This regiment came into the field on the evening of the second day and in the midst of the battle. At sunset we were whipped and night saved the army. I never felt such sickening anxiety. We went into camp a mile and a half from the front and in rear of the right wing, in a wood. At sunset the enemy outflanked us and our men began to give way. Presently they came swarming through our camp in demoralised squads — wounded and well, officers and men — so that we were forced out and obliged to move back. Then it was resolved to fall back that night twenty miles, but fortunately at midnight this determination was reconsidered, our position was strengthened and next day the enemy were fairly whipped out.

Now, for the future, how do things stand? I guess Lee has 60,000 men left, but he is outflanked at the South West and at Charleston, and he must still make head against the large and now confident army. Southern affairs do seem desperate. They seem to me in just that condition from which genius alone could restore them and here is where, to my mind, the rebels have sustained their most vital loss. Stonewall Jackson would have given them this chance had he lived. In Virginia alone since the war began have they held their own, and what have they done in Virginia which they did not owe to Jackson? Now his loss to them seems to me to be irreparable and almost decisive. In a single campaign the South has lost Jackson and Vicksburg, and if they are not desperate, I do not know what can bring them to it. I do believe Jackson had genius and in that respect stands alone in the annals of this most stupid and uninspired of struggles. Certainly his death excited throughout this army a deep regret which was lost only in a sense of intense relief. Today I am sure, as Americans, this army takes a pride in “Stonewall” second only to that of the Virginians and confederates. To have fought against him is next to having fought under him.

As for Lee, how can we have faith in him? He might have crushed Burnside at Fredericksburg and yet he let him escape. Hooker got away, but then Lee was glad enough to let him go, for, at the start, Lee was surprised, out-generaled, and on the verge of utter destruction. Jackson seemed to have saved the army which Lee jeopardized. As to Lee’s two invasions, he cannot brag much on Antietam, for Jackson almost destroyed Pope only to enable Lee to get pounded to a mummy in Maryland. And now finally at Gettysburg, with every chance in his favor, and against a dispirited army and a new General, he has incurred a disaster to the Southern army which belittles our defeat at Fredericksburg or their own at Malvern Hill. Thus I cannot share in the general admiration of Lee. Jackson was his right hand man and his right hand is gone. For the rest I do not see that they are stronger in Generals than we. . . .