Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to his father, U.S. Minister to the U.K.
Camp of the 5th Mass. Cav’y
Point Lookout, Md., December 18, 1864
I did however meet Wilson [in Washington] and some of Grant’s staff, and picked up some reliable military news which it is my object now to let you have. Wilson was in a state of great excitement over the Wilmington expedition and “confidentially” told me, as he was telling every one else, how two hundred tons of powder were going to blow all Wilmington and its forts high and dry; how Butler had 20,000 picked men, including Weitzel’s black division; and how Grant had told him that, for assaulting works, black troops were inferior to none, if indeed not the best in the world. All that he had to say, however, you will get with its results in the papers. I met at the same time, however, Colonel Sharpe, chief of secret information on Grant’s staff and an old acquaintance of mine. I told him I wanted material for a letter to you and then had a long talk with him. All that he tells me is reliable. In answer to my questions he told me, that Lee had now 55,000 men in Richmond and that Grant, now that Butler was gone, confronted him with 75,000. Lee is so “dug-in” that Grant cannot assault him and he has not sufficient preponderance of force to send a suitable moveable column round into his rear. Lee is hard up for supplies. The Danville road is used only for Army supplies and on it they bring in about forty-five carloads a day, and the balance needed for the Army has been waggoned round our flank from Weldon. The citizens of Richmond depend wholly for supplies on the Central Railroad and hence the absolute necessity of Lee’s holding the valley. On hand in Richmond there are about fourteen days’ supplies and this amount cannot be increased. Meanwhile our friends in Richmond inform Sharpe that the rebel rolling stock is so reduced that on the Danville road they have some twenty-five engines and are never able to keep more than five in running order at any time; and they further say that if we can destroy the Central Railroad for thirty miles thoroughly, the material to repair the damage cannot be obtained in the South and Richmond must starve. Meanwhile Lee has sent two Divisions to oppose Sherman and replaced them by two small Divisions from Early, and Grant within forty-eight hours had ordered Sheridan to attack Early and, if successful, to try and press down and seize the Central Railroad. Meanwhile Grant, Sharpe says, considers that the Army of the Potomac has done its work for the year and that now it will observe Lee, and his (Grant’s) winter occupation will be to take Savannah, Charleston and Wilmington, shut the confederates up, and organize a cooperative force to overwhelm Lee in Richmond in the spring, should he remain there. But he does not believe that he can remain there. Said Sharpe: “A few days ago I was reading him my letters from Richmond and expressed my belief that Lee must dig out during the winter. You know how Grant sits and lets you talk and usually expresses no opinion? Then, however, he quickly looked up and said, ‘Do you think so, colonel? Well, I think so too.'”
We then went on to the constitution of Lee’s Army and in reply to my questions he told me: “Lee’s present 55,000 is not at all the old material. It is all that he can rake and scrape — clerks, Government employees, detailed men and all. Of his old fighting stock he has about 22,000 left. Those men we must kill before the country can have peace. They are old soldiers and fierce slave-holders. Those men have got to be used up.” For the rest, he told me Lee’s Army does not amount to much. All the regiments from the South are maddened at being kept in Virginia while Sherman is loose at their homes. Accordingly the desertions come in about thirty a day from Georgians, Floridians and Mississippians. “Now,” said Sharpe, “Lee’s difficulty is this: Virginia has raised sixty-two regiments; of these Lee has in his Army fifty-five, and the rest of his Army is largely made up of North Carolinians. If he gives up Virginia and North Carolina, we shall then get the soldiers from those states, and those are the men he can’t lose.”
I asked him about Lee’s means of recruiting his Army. He told me he had none; our armies overran the South and no more men were to be had. “As to their arming the negroes,” he said, “that’s out of the question. In the first place, let me tell you, in two years I have examined thousands of our men who have escaped from them to us, and I never yet heard of the first case where a black man could n’t be relied on to help them escape, and if they put arms in their hands, by —, those devils would paddle over to us so quick they could n’t catch them. Besides this arming the blacks would just disarm the 22,000 fierce rebels that Lee has left, for those are the remains of the men who fought for slavery.”
Grant he assured me was now in excellent spirits. He wants more men, but he considers that, except in his present defences, Lee has n’t got one week’s fight left in him. Sherman has demonstrated that the rebellion is a shell. Thomas’ victory leaves Lee only to contend with, and Lee’s destruction is a question only of material and time, unless he leaves Virginia and retreats into the Gulf states. There he might yet, by rallying around his Army the remnant of Hood’s, make a new front. Accordingly it is just as well to prevent his getting out of Virginia. Of forage, the enemy has none. Their cavalry has been sent down dismounted to Georgia. Of iron they have been so short as to be unable to manufacture shot requiring to be made of malleable iron. Finally, said he, “Lee can keep his Army just where it is, but he can’t attack, nor can he fight a battle. Victory or defeat would be alike ruinous. As for Hood, they’ve got to get rid of him anyhow; for even if he wins, he is killing the rebellion by his very loss of men.” The Army of the Potomac, he told me, was sadly reduced from what we had once known. “But people say it has accomplished nothing! This year in ruining itself in nine pitched battles, it ruined Lee and one week’s more fighting would have left him nothing to fight with. Meanwhile Sherman’s Army is intact, and Thomas has made a new Army which can not only hold Hood, but has destroyed him.”
Thus, you see, I have cast for you the military horoscope. What I have told you, you may rely upon, as it was told me by a man as well informed as Grant himself, and from it you may safely draw your inferences of the future. Charleston is left to Sherman, and Butler, if successful, is to press into the interior and operate on Lee’s communications on one side, while Sheridan presses them from the other — the Army of the Potomac meanwhile watching him in his works. . . .
