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

London, September 26, 1862

Latterly indeed we have felt a painful anxiety for the safety of Washington itself. For it is very plain that the expedition of the rebels must have been long meditated, and that it embraced a plan of raising the standard of revolt in Maryland as well as Pennsylvania. It has been intimated to me that their emissaries here have given out significant hints of a design to bring in both those states to their combination, which was to be executed about the month of September. That such a scheme was imaginable I should have supposed, until the occurrence of General Pope’s campaign and the effects of it as described in your letter of the 29^th ulto….

Thus far it has happened a little fortunately for our comfort here that most of our reverses have been reported during the most dead season of the year, when Parliament was not in session, the Queen and Court and ministry are all away indulging in their customary interval of vacation, and London is said to be wholly empty — the two millions and a half of souls who show themselves counting for nothing in comparison with the hundred thousand magnates that disappear. It is however a fact that the latter make opinion which emanates mainly from the clubhouses. Here the London Times is the great oracle, and through this channel its unworthy and degrading counsels towards America gain their general currency. I am sorry for the manliness of Great Britain when I observe the influence to which it has submitted itself. But there is no help for it now. The die is cast, and whether we gain or we lose our point, alienation for half a century is the inevitable effect between the two countries. The pressure of this conviction always becomes greatest in our moments of adversity. It is therefore lucky that it does not come when the force of the social combination is commonly the greatest also. We have thus been in a great degree free from the necessity of witnessing it in society in any perceptible form. Events are travelling at such a pace that it is scarcely conceivable to suppose some termination or other of this suspense is not approaching. The South cannot uphold its slave system much longer against the gradual and certain undermining of its slaveholding population. Its power of endurance thus far has been beyond all expectation, but there is a term for all things finite, and the evidences of suffering and of exhaustion thicken. The war now swallows up the children and the elders. And when they are drawn away, what becomes of the authority over the servants? It may last a little while from the force of habit, but in the end it cannot fail to be obliterated….

Sharpsburg, Md.
September 25, 1862

Next morning my only good horse was fairly done up and in the name of humanity I had to leave her at Frederick to take my chance of ever seeing her again, and with her, as I could not burden my other horse, I had to leave all my baggage and left everything including my last towel, my tooth-brush, my soap and every shirt and this, alas! was a fortnight ago! As soon as I left her I followed the regiment and had hardly left the town when the sound of artillery in the front admonished me that now we were practically in the advance. I pressed forward and rejoined the column some three miles from the town at a halt and with sharp artillery practice in front. Here we stood three hours resting by the side of the road and waiting for it to be opened for us. Now and then the shot and shell fluttered by us, reminding me of James Island. Some of them came disagreeably near and at last some infantry came up and for a moment sat down to rest with us. I told a Captain near me that the enemy had a perfect range of the road and he’d better be careful how he drew their fire and just as I uttered the words, r-r-r-h went a round shot through the bushes over my head, slid across Forbes and Caspar as they lay on the ground some thirty yards further on and took off the legs of three infantry men next to them. After that it did n’t take long for the infantry to deploy into the field and leave us in undisturbed possession of the road. Still the infantry did it and the enemy soon limbered up and were off, having delayed our pursuit some three hours. Then we followed and pushed over the hills wondering at the strength of the enemies’ position. As we got to the top we pushed on faster and faster until we went down the further side at a gallop. The enemy were close in front and now was the time. Soon we took to the fields and then, on the slope of a hill, with the enemy’s artillery beyond it, formed in column. More shelling, more artillery, and the bullets sung over our heads in lively style, and then “forward” as fast as we could go, over the hill, pulling down fences, floundering through ditches, struggling to outflank them. But the fences were too much for us and we had to return to the road, all losing our tempers and I all my writing materials, the one thing I had clung to. We made the road, however, in time to witness some of the humbug of the war. As we clattered into the town the Illinois cavalry, commanded by Colonel Farnsworth, not unknown to my father, were in front of us and, having hurried into the town were cracking away with their carbines and giving to me, at least, the idea of a sharp engagement in process. We followed them and got our arms all ready, but, as I rode through the single street of the pretty little town, a little excited and pistol in hand, I was somewhat surprised at the number of women who were waving their handkerchiefs, hailing us with delight as liberators and passing out water to our soldiers. For now we were in the truly loyal part of Maryland and everywhere were greeted with delight. It certainly did n’t look to me much like a battle, and yet there were those carbines snapping away like crackers on the 4th of July. In vain I looked for rebels, nary one could I see and at last it dawned on my mind that I was in the midst of a newspaper battle — “a cavalry charge,” “a sharp skirmish,” lots of glory, but n’ary reb.

Here we paused, while I thought we should have pressed forward, and our artillery battered away from the hill to see if any one was there. Meanwhile the rebels burned the bridge before us and made off for the range of hills on the other side of the valley. Presently we followed, forded the stream and followed them up the road, through the most beautiful valley I ever saw, all circled on three sides with lofty wooded ranges surrounding a beautiful rolling valley highly cultivated and blooming like a garden. A blazing bridge and barn in the middle of it suggested something unusual. We hurried through the valley and up the hills on the other side and there we made a pause, brought to a dead stand. It did n’t look like much, but we did n’t like to meddle with it. It was only a single man on horseback in the middle of the road some few hundred yards before us, but it stopped us like a brick wall. We stood on the brow of one hill, with a straight road running through the valley below and disappearing in a high wooded range on the other side. We did n’t know it then, but we were looking on what next day became the battle field of South Mountain. In the road below us were a few rebel videttes and on the hill beyond were posted, hardly to be distinguishable even with our glasses, a battery of artillery. We stood and looked and debated and at last our leaders concluded that it was n’t healthy to go forward, and so we went back. We went into camp on a hill-top and passed a tedious night. It was very cold, and we were hungry, but still we slept well and in the morning feasted on an ox we killed the night before.

At seven o’clock we moved forward to our position of the day before, struggling along to the front through a dense advancing army corps. We got there and took up our position in support of a battery and soon our artillery opened and after about an hour the enemy began to answer. Presently we were moved far to the front and of course a blunder was made, and we found ourselves drawn up in a cornfield in front of our most advanced battery and between it and the enemy, with the shells hurtling over us like mad, and now and then falling around us, but fortunately doing us no harm save ruffling our nerves. Here we sat on our horses for two hours, doing no good and unpleasantly exposed. At last we were moved from there and sent round to our left to support some infantry and there we passed the afternoon, listening to the crackle of musketry and the roar of artillery till night, when it ceased and the men lay down in ranks and slept, holding the bridles of the horses. This was all we saw of the battle of South Mountain, which at the time we supposed to be a heavy skirmish….

Here we lay all that day and I think the next, with a continual spattering of shells around, some of which injured other commands adjoining but all spared ours, and, at last, one day we were ordered early to the rear and we knew there was to be a big fight. Then came the battle of Antietam Creek and we saw about as much of it as of that at South Mountain. We were soon brought hurriedly to the extreme front and posted in support of a battery amid the heaviest shelling and cannonade I ever heard. It was a terrific artillery duel, which lasted where we were all day and injured almost no one. At first, as we took up position, we lost a horse or two, and the storm of artillery, the crashing of shells and the deep reverberations from the hills were confusing and terrifying, and yet, so well were we posted and so accustomed to it did we become, that ten minutes after the imminent danger was over and we were ordered to dismount, I fell sound asleep on the grass and my horse got away from me.

In fact this whole subject of battle is misunderstood at home. We hear of the night before battle. I have seen three of them and have thought I saw half a dozen when the battle did n’t come off, and I have never yet seen one when every officer whom I saw did not seem, not only undisturbed, but wholly to fail to realise that any thing unusual was about to occur. In battle men are always frightened on coming under fire, but they soon get accustomed to it, if it does little execution, however heavy it may be. If the execution is heavy they’re not nearly so apt to go to sleep, and I can’t say I have ever yet fallen in with that lust for danger of which I have read….

London, September 19, 1862

England is at peace, and in spite of the drawback occasioned by the failure of the cotton crop is prosperous. During the last twenty years the great development of the manufacturing policy has poured vast sums into her lap, whilst the outlets furnished to her poor populations in the colonies and in America have prevented the growth of any discontent at the unequal distribution of that wealth. In all my different journeys through the interior I find every evidence of substantial thrift. No dilapidated houses, or neglected lands or broken windows or ruinous barns. Even the oldest dwellings seem cared for and elaborately put in order. The question naturally arises are there no very poor people? It must be answered, not in the agricultural districts, but you must look for them in the populous towns. Go through many parts of London and you will be at no loss to understand where they are. And so it will be in the great manufacturing centres in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Thus it appears as if England showed two distinct faces — one of happiness and one of misery, the first owing to the last. For however great may be the prosperity of the manufacturer, it appears to be resting only upon the extent to which the share in it of his operative can be reduced to a minimum. Were it not for the resource of emigration I doubt whether this condition of things could last long. As it is, I see no prospect of any change. The rich are growing richer, and conservatism gains rather than loses in its struggles for power….

London, September 5, 1862

Your appointment reached us some time ago and I was rejoiced at it, because I think such a place as this gives more room for expansion than that of a regimental officer. I doubt whether the atmosphere of Lieutenants is healthy, or of Captains or Majors. I think you have grown rusty at Hilton Head and I want to hear more vigorous talk. As to your speculations about the end of the war and a peace, I won’t say that I would n’t consent to argue about it some day, but you know perfectly well that until we’ve driven the South into their cotton fields we have no chance even to offer those terms. Perhaps on the broad national question I look at the matter differently from you. Apart from other causes, I am here in Europe and of course am influenced by European opinion. Firmly convinced as I am that there can be no peace on our continent so long as the Southern people exist, I don’t much care whether they are destroyed by emancipation, or in other words a vigorous system of guerilla war carried on by negroes on our side, or by the slower and more doubtful measures of choaking them with their own cotton. Perhaps before long we shall have to use both weapons as vigorously as we are now using the last. But one thing is clear to my mind, which is that we must not let them as an independent state get the monopoly of cotton again, unless we want to find a powerful and bitterly hostile nation on our border, supported by all the moral and social influence of Great Britain in peace; certain in war to drag us into all the European complications; sure to be in perpetual anarchy within, but always ready to disturb anything and everything without; to compel us to support a standing army no less large than if we conquer them and hold them so, and with infinite means of wounding and scattering dissension among us. We must ruin them before we let them go or it will all have to be done over again. And we must exterminate them in the end, be it long or be it short, for it is a battle between us and slavery.

I see that your regiment is ordered to Virginia which shows a gleam of reason in the War Department. What it was ever sent to Port Royal for, the Lord he knows. At any rate, however, it has spared you some hard fighting, and with the prospect you have now before you, I think you need n’t be sorry for that. For my own part I confess that I value human life at a pretty low price, and God knows I set no higher value on my own than on others. I always was a good deal of a sceptic and speculator in theories and think precious small potatoes of man in general and myself in particular. But I confess to feeling very badly when the news comes of our disasters and losses. Poor Stephen Perkins. I have a kind of an idea that Stephen thought much as I do about life. He always seemed to me to take rather a contemptuous view of the world in general, and I rather like to imagine him, after the shock and the pain was over, congratulating himself that at last he was through with all the misères of an existence that had bored him and that offered him little that he cared for; and now he could turn his mind to the exploring of a new life, with new duties and a new career, after having done all that man can do to discharge his debt to his God and his fellow-men in the old. There are men enough in Europe who hold these ideas with more or less variation, but Stephen and perhaps Arthur Dexter are the only ones among us whom I should call bitten with them — with Stephen, his eyes excused them. With Arthur, his digestion.

Our life here is quiet but very busy. No more is heard of intervention. Six hundred thousand men have put an end to that, and the English think besides that the South need no help. Of late the troubles in Italy have drawn people’s minds away from us and as their harvest is very poor, our grain is too necessary to joke about….

Willard’s Hotel Washington, August 28, 1862

Things here look badly enough and amid this atmosphere of treason, jealousy and dissension, it requires good courage not to despair of the republic. As I said, I am going back to my regiment instead of onto Pope’s staff, and you must take it out in cursing my instability. My reasons are manifold. The regiment and Colonel think I ought to come back or resign; we are about to see active cavalry service; and finally, between ourselves, I am ashamed at what I hear of Pope. All army officers say that he is a humbug and is sure to come to grief; “as big a liar as John Pope” is an old army expression; he has already played himself out in the army of Virginia and he has got himself into such a position that he will be crushed and Washington lost, unless McClellan saves him. He may come out with colors flying, for he a lucky man; but if he does, he is a dangerous one, and I am advised not to connect my fortunes with his….

Willard’s Hotel, Washington
August 27, 1862

Here I am once more in the city of Washington. Since I last wrote the first detachment of our regiment has arrived at Fortress Monroe, and is now in camp at Acquia Creek, while I have come up here to see about this business of Pope’s staff. I find the old city much as usual, but still not the same. It was indeed pleasant for me to get here and at least to see something familiar once more, and I looked at all the public buildings and even at Willard’s as at old friends. Once more I have really slept in a bed and I really never enjoyed anything in my life, in its kind, more than the delicious little supper which Gautier got up for me. You don’t know how much eight months of coarse fare improve one’s faculties for gastronomic enjoyment, and last evening I experienced a new sensation.

Here I am though, and what next? Shall I go onto Pope’s staff? I think not. This is a very different place from Hilton Head and here I am learning many strange things which make me open my eyes very wide, which make me sorrow over our past and do not encourage me for the future. Here I have access to certain means of information and I think I can give you a little more light than you now have. Do you know that just before leaving the Peninsula McClellan offered to march into Richmond on his own responsibility? Do you know that in the opinion of our leading military men Washington is in more danger than it ever yet has been? Do you know that but for McDowell’s jealousy we should have triumphantly marched into Richmond? Do you know that Pope is a humbug and known to be so by those who put him in his present place? Do you know that today he is so completely outgeneraled as to be cut off from Washington? Yet these are not rumors, but facts, doled out to me by members of McClellan’s and Halleck’s staffs.

Our rulers seem to me to be crazy. The air of this city seems thick with treachery; our army seems in danger of utter demoralization and I have not since the war begun felt such a tug on my nerves as today in Washington. Everything is ripe for a terrible panic, the end of which I cannot see or even imagine. I always mean to be one of the hopeful, but just now I cast about in vain for something on which to hang my hopes. I still believe in McClellan, but I know that the nearest advisers of the President — among them Mr. Holt — distrust his earnestness in this war. Stanton is jealous of him and he and Pope are in bitter enmity. All pin their hope on Halleck and we must do as the rest do; but it is hinted to me that Stanton is likely to be a block in Halleck’s way, and the jealousies of our generals are more than a new man can manage. We need a head and we must have it; a man who can keep these jealousies under subordination; and we must have him or go to the wall. Is Halleck going to supply our need? I hope he is, but while the question is in doubt we may lose Washington. You will think that I am in a panic and the most frightened man in Washington. I assure you it is not so. I do consider the outside condition of affairs very critical, but it is my glimpse behind the scenes, the conviction that small men with selfish motives control the war without any central power to keep them in bounds, which terrifies and discourages me.

Take the history of the Peninsular campaign. My authorities are one aid of McClellan’s and Halleck’s Assistant Adjutant General, but the facts speak for themselves, and the inferences any man may draw. Stanton, contrary to the first principle of strategy and for motives not hard to comprehend, divides Virginia into four independent departments. McClellan takes charge of one and a column is taken from him to form another under charge of McDowell. It is solemnly promised McClellan that McDowell shall join him before Richmond, and meanwhile he is retained where he is to protect Washington. Mark the result. McClellan fights the battle of Hanover Court House, with all its loss of life and time, simply to open the road for McDowell to join him and he does open it. McDowell’s advance guard hears his cannon on that day, but McDowell does not stir, and McClellan, still looking for him, forms that fatal Chickahominy front of twenty miles. Doubtless McDowell was kept back by orders, but in how far was he instrumental in procuring these orders to suit himself? McClellan’s staff do not hesitate to say that he dictated them on pretence of danger to Washington, in reality because his advance would have absorbed his command in that of McClellan. Take the pretence. Jackson makes his raid in the valley of the Shenandoah, and again McDowell’s advance hears the sound of his guns. Washington is in danger now. As before he does not move and Jackson escapes and returns to attack McClellan. Had McDowell done his duty either for McClellan or against Jackson, we should now have Richmond and McClellan would now be the conquering hero. He did neither and is now in disgrace, as subordinated to Pope; but McClellan is not the conquering hero. Not half an hour ago Halleck’s nephew and private secretary told me that I could not imagine the trouble these jealousies gave his uncle. Said he, “McDowell and Sigel will not fight under Pope. McClellan and Pope are not in sympathy”; and he added an intimation that McClellan was most restive under Halleck.

Under these circumstances what can we expect? What can we hope for? Sigel stands well, but all our army officers are bitter and jealous against him. In Burnside there is indeed hope. He has been true and generous and, what is much, successful. He did not hesitate to award to McClellan the credit of planning his Carolina campaign, and, unlike McDowell, when told to send to McClellan all the troops he could spare, he at once sent him twenty-eight regiments and six batteries, leaving himself and the Major General under him some 3000 men in all. We have some grim old fighters who do their work and do not scheme. Such they tell me are Sumner and Heintzelman; but even of these the last is outspoken against McClellan because he will not fight with more energy. The simple truth is the man has not come and now we mean to supply his place with vast numbers of undrilled recruits. Shall we succeed? You can judge as well as I.

Thus the war is gloomily enough approaching its last and bloodiest stage. Unless Halleck is the man of iron who can rule, it will be discordant numbers against compact strategy. We must face the music, though we do not like the tune….

At Sea, Steam Transport McClellan
August 22, 1862

Here I am at sea once more and heading north, but not as I had hoped I might be going north about this time, leaving this conflict literally settled behind me, but only on my way to the dark and bloody ground in Virginia. Our regiment most unexpectedly received orders for the north one day last week at about the same time that I received my orders to report to General Pope. Accordingly I go north with them. As to my future, this unexpected change has set it all afloat. The war is evidently going to continue some time longer and my regiment is now going into active service. Is it wise for me now to separate myself from a Massachusetts regiment, and shall I not be more useful where I am than on an ornamental staff? These reflections puzzle me much and I do not know what will become of me. I shall try to decide for the best and I do know that we now seem to be going into the thick of the conflict….

We left the shores of South Carolina on Wednesday last, just seven months to a day from the time when I first set foot on them. I don’t think any of us felt much regret at leaving the State and certainly none of us at leaving Hilton Head. Of all the places it has ever been my fate to set foot on Hilton Head is by many degrees the meanest. Of Beaufort and Port Royal island I retain many pleasant memories, particularly of the last, than which I have never seen a more delightful island. But Hilton Head — dust, sand, government warehouses and fleas, constitute all its attractions. Thus ends my first campaign, and has n’t it been a failure! — a failure personally and publicly, nothing in itself and leading to nothing. Here I am just where I was when I started. I have seen nothing but the distant spires of Charleston and have not been promoted. I have had a bitter contest with my Captain and seen little active service….

London, August 1, 1862

We have been much prejudiced here by the unfortunate turn things took at Richmond. It is impossible for a non-military man to form any judgment of the events of the campaign, but one thing seems to be certain, that General McClellan must have made some egregious miscalculation of the strength of his right wing. Otherwise the attack of Stuart could not have been successful. As to the future I dare not count upon anything. From this point I should hardly suppose that we had any forces left anywhere. The only accounts we get are of the multitudes on the other side. Our newspapers and quidnuncs delight in counting them with additions of many ciphers, until I am bound to infer that the census of 1860 is all a northern forgery, and that the slave states have had the fertility of the northern hordes that overran the Romans in the days of the lower Empire. So far as foreign countries are concerned I am very much of opinion that our press does more harm than good to our cause. It discloses all our own position, whilst it exaggerates that of the rebels of which it knows really nothing. As a consequence evil minded people here take every advantage of both practices, to our harm….

If you are still with General Williams I beg you to express to him my thanks for his remembrance of me in the commendation he was disposed to give you. Nothing could have been more grateful to my feelings. Much as I deplore this unfortunate war, brought on by the infatuation of men who are only sealing their own fate in persevering in it, I see and admit the necessity which forces you to take your share in it. And such being the fact, it is consoling to me to reflect that you are doing your duty with credit and with honor. Should the time arrive when you are released in safety and with propriety I shall hail it with joy. Redeunt saturnia regna. In the meantime I look to the emancipation of the slaves as the veritable solution of the problem. After that is accomplished I care comparatively little what may be the determination of the southern states, or of their people….

Hilton Head, S.C.
July 28, 1862

Tins place is not at all the pestilential spot you all seem to suppose, and if you will convince yourself of that, you will all save yourselves a great deal of anxiety. The deaths here of all descriptions, arising from disease, wounds and accidents, are not more than six a week out of some 5000 men, which is about six per cent a year and that in the very heart of the summer. From this you will see that the station, however disagreeable, and General Williams says it’s the most so he ever saw, certainly cannot be considered unhealthy….

We get nothing new here. Col. Williams’ nomination as Brigadier was among the unfinished business of Congress and so falls to the ground; but I shall act on his staff, though I expect very soon to return to the regiment, though not to my old company…. Ben Crowninshield is at home on furlough and at Sharon…. Lawrence Motley is really down sick, as also is Rand. Greely Curtis has also been on his back — all of them four times as sick as ____. Henry Higginson is acting in command of the regiment and more than a third of the officers are away sick or on detached duty. By way of variety our horses have the glanders and we have lost some forty and not yet succeeded in wholly getting rid of it. So we feel the necessity of some change, somehow.

General Hunter is very unpopular — arbitrary and wholly taken up with his negro question. His one regiment is a failure, and becoming more so, and I have no faith in the experiment anyhow. I smiled audibly at your idea of my taking a commission in one of them; after all my assertion of principles to become a “nigger driver” in my old age, for that is what it amounts to, seeing that they don’t run away, or shirk work or fatigue duty. No! Hunter and you are all wrong, and, for once, the War Department was right. The negroes should be organized and officered as soldiers; they should have arms put in their hands and be drilled simply with a view to their moral elevation and the effect on their self-respect, and for the rest they should be used as fatigue parties and on all fatigue duty. As to being made soldiers, they are more harm than good. It will be years before they can be made to stand before their old masters, unless (and the exception means a great deal) some leader of their own, some Toussaint rises, who is one of them and inspires them with confidence. Under our system and with such white officers as we give them, we might make a soldiery equal to the native Hindoo regiments in about five years. It won’t pay and the idea of arming the blacks as soldiers must be abandoned.

To my mind the ultras are doing all the harm they can and it is yet a question whether they will not save slavery out of this war, rather than let Providence work its destruction in ways other than those preconceived by them. I sincerely hope Sumner will be defeated in the fall election. As to the army, so far as I see it, it is completely demoralized on this question by the conduct of these men, and it makes me sick to hear New England men talk on the subject of the negroes here and all who would aid them. Such prejudice and narrow bigotry I never met in Southerners. There is no abolitionism or, I fear, even emancipation in the army here. The ultras in their eagerness have spoilt all. It is all right, you know, and for the best; but is n’t it enough to make an equine laugh to see a man like Sumner, so convinced that he alone sees the clear way, so absolute in his opinions and wholly devoid of charity to others, withal such an utterly blind instrument in the hand of Providence. The plot thickens and I hope this war will spare me, as I don’t want to die, until I see how all this turmoil, confusion and disaster, is, on pure philosophical principles, to result, as we know it will, in the advancement of the human kind. How much and how long must you and I suffer that that advancement may be worked out.