previous next

[381] him; of course I did not see him. He returned in the afternoon, accompanied by Wilkes, of the Spirit of the Times. It is understood that the Cabinet is divided, Chase upholding Hooker, Blair and Seward in opposition. I have always thought Hooker would be allowed another chance, and I sincerely trust and hope, and indeed believe, he will do better, as I think he now sees the policy of caution is not a good one. Until our recent imbroglio, he has always spoken of me very warmly, though he has never asked my advice, or listened to my suggestions. What he is going to do or say now I don't know, but I shall not count on any very friendly offices from him. Still, I should be sorry to see him removed, unless a decidedly better man is substituted.


camp near Falmouth, Va., May 25, 1863.
I have addressed a circular letter to each of the officers present at the much-talked — of council of war, asking them to give me their recollections of what I said, and unless I am terribly mistaken, their answers will afford me ample means of refuting Hooker's assertion that my opinion sustained him in withdrawing the army.

We have to-day the glorious news from Grant.1 It is in sad contrast with our miserable fiasco here, the more sad when you reflect that ours was entirely unnecessary, and that we have never had such an opportunity of gaining a great victory before.

Did I tell you that Curtin promptly answered my letter, saying that General Cadwalader had entirely misapprehended what he said to him; that he (Curtin) had never so understood me, or repeated to Cadwalader that I had lost all confidence in Hooker?


camp near Falmouth, Va., May 26, 1863.
George's2 appointment as Aide-de-Camp and Captain arrived yesterday.

We have nothing new; everything is quiet on our side. I am looking for a movement on the part of the enemy that will stir us up pretty soon. Stoneman is off on leave, and I don't think will return here again. He does not want to, and Hooker does not want him back. Hooker is very severe on him, and says his raid amounted to nothing at all; that he was eight days going and only two coming


1 Vicksburg, Miss., invested by the Federal troops under Major-General Ulysses S. Grant. Confederate troops under General John C. Pemberton.

2 Son of General Meade.

1913.

Tufts University provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Falmouth, Va. (Virginia, United States) (2)
Vicksburg (Mississippi, United States) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
May 26th, 1863 AD (1)
May 25th, 1863 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: