Headquarters Army Of The Potomac, September 16, 1863.
The enclosed correspondence will explain itself. The day I
received Mr. Young's letter, there was visiting at my camp the Hon. John
Covode, of Pennsylvania, and Colonel Puleston, a friend of Governor Curtin.
Both these gentlemen were present at the presentation and heard my remarks;
both are ardent Republicans, yet they admitted they did not hear me make any
reference to election day; on the contrary, admired the skill with which I
praised Curtin without alluding to his political position. I do not know what
Mr. Young will say or do, but it is his fault, or rather that of his reporter,
and not mine, if he has been placed in a false position.
The enemy seem disposed to keep quiet the other side of the
Rapidan, and to let me hold the country between that river and the
Rappahannock, which I took from them on Sunday, including Culpeper Court House.
I have now got as far as Pope was last year when he fought the battle of Cedar
Mountain. I trust I will have better luck than he had. I am now waiting to know
what they in Washington want done. Lee has certainly sent away a third of his
army, but he has enough left to bother me in advancing, and though I have no
doubt I can make him fall back, yet my force is insufficient to take advantage
of his retiring, as I could not follow him to the fortifications of Richmond
with the small army I have.
At the time Mr. Covode was here, he was accompanied by a
Judge Carter, of Ohio, recently appointed Chief Judge of the new court created
in the District of Columbia by the last Congress. These gentlemen spent the
night with me, and I had a long talk on national affairs, and I saw what I was
before pretty well convinced of, that there was not only little prospect of any
adjustment of our civil war, but apparently no idea of how it was to be carried
on. The draft is confessedly a failure. Instead of three hundred thousand men,
it will not produce over twenty-five thousand, and they mostly worthless. There
is no volunteering, and this time next year the whole of this army of veterans
goes out of service, and no visible source of resupply. And yet no one seems to
realize this state of affairs, but talks of going to war with England, France,
and the rest of the world, as if our power was illimitable. Well, Heaven will
doubtless in good time bring all things right.
SOURCE: George Meade, The Life and Letters of George
Gordon Meade, Vol. 2, p. 149
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