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till evening; but the last news is, that they made a desperate attempt on all sides and broke through a part of our right, just at nightfall.
Hancock hoped to retake the part of the line lost, with the reinforcements coming up; but we have not yet heard the result.
I feel rather anxious, though I don't fear for Hancock's safety; but I like to see him fully successful.
Oh, bah!
Captain Miller is just in (this is eleven o'clock at night). Hancock has lost eight guns — among them, I am told, Sleeper's battery.
Poor Sleeper was here this afternoon, wounded in the arm. It is too much all one way in this business, it really is!
I don't like to complain, because it troubles you, but it must break out occasionally.
I get so mad and so bothered.
For, when we have no good chance, or almost none, when our best undertakings fall through, I lose confidence in each move, and, when I hear the cannon, I look for nothing but our men coming back and a beggarly report of loss of prisoners.
It is not right to feel so, but I can't help it. When a man gets knocked down every time, he expects to go down the next.
Well, well, well, I feel already a little better at this grumbling.
I must be a sorry eel if I am not yet used to this sort of skinning.
I like to see General Meade.
I think these contretemps rather rouse and wind him up; he doesn't seem to be depressed by that sort of thing; perhaps three years of it have made it necessary to his life, just as some persons enjoy a daily portion of arsenic.
August 26, 1864
It may be laid down as a general principle, that it. is a bad thing, in a musket or a man, to go off at half-cock.
In some respects I may be said so to have done in my letter last night.
Our information this morning shows that, after dark, while we marched off the ground one way, the enemy 