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threatened the legs of all our horses; and which gave two or three officers most awful falls on the frozen ground.
At 2 oclock this morning (December 2) we crossed the Rapid Ann, and were glad to roll ourselves in our blankets in the same camp we had the night of the 26th.
And so ends what I think I shall call the Great Seven-days' Flank.
If you ask what were the causes of failure, they lie in a nutshell--Slowness and want of Detail. We have fought for two years and a half, but it takes no wiseacre to see that we yet have much to learn.
Were it not for the remarkable intelligence of the men, we could not do even as well as we do. . . .
Headquarters Army of Potomac December 10, 1863
All the officers are inclined to be petulant and touchy, for they think that winter quarters are coming and are all stretching out for “leaves,” which they know only a part can get. Major Biddle becomes quite irate over the subject.
“Now there is General Webb has a ten-day leave,” says B. petulantly; “every corps is to give one general a ten-day leave.
I don't want any little ten-day leave; I want a decent leave; a sixty-day leave.
I have been two years and a half in this army, and never had but seven days leave, except once when I was sick; and it isn't any fun to be sick.
If we are going into winter quarters, one third of this army can do what is necessary, just as well as the whole; and they might as well be liberal to us. It is too bad!
really too bad!”
Such discoveries of patriotic services as the officers now make, to back up their applications, are miraculous.
They have all been in service since the First Bull Run (the Genesis of the Potomac Army); they have all been wounded six times; they have 