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 marched off the other, leaving
their dead unburied and some wounded. Accounts of the field show their loss to
have been fearful, much greater than ours, which was not serious either in
killed, wounded or prisoners. Thus, all the strategic results lie with us, and
we hold the Weldon road. But I would not have you believe I was disposed to
turn about and crow. No! I do not so much mind the loss of the guns — a mere
matter of prestige — but I do mind the fact that the 2d Corps men did
not all fight as they should have fought; had they done so, the Rebels (who I
suppose were about as three to two) could never have budged them. As Major
Mitchell observed: “The Rebels licked us, but a dozen more such lickings and
there will be nothing left of the Rebel army!” My gracious, what a donkey am I
to be solemnly sending a telegraph, when I have not been in a single fight. I
felt like a donkey at the time, but I thought you would be fussing and
imagining, because there had been fighting in various directions. But I
will not be so silly in future. And there is your mother, bless her heart!
thanking God I am safe out of it, when I have not been in it! Really, I
feel it almost my duty to go on the picket line and get shot at by a grey-back,
for the sake of doing something! Yes, ma'am, thirty-one is quite an old
man, but I am “so as to be about,” can ride a horse and hold up my head; and,
as the late T––– remarked, when he proposed, “I am good for ten years,” which
turned out to be true (to the regret of Mrs. T.), for he lived twenty-five
years after and begat sons and daughters. You must thank Madre1 from
me for the present of “Forbes's Naked-eyed Medusa.” Tell her, also, that,
having neglected my natural history for three years, [much] of which has been devoted
to becoming semi-idiotic from having nothing to do but listen to cannon and
mortars and rifles, and associate with young gentlemen still further advanced
in semi-idiocy, I have not a clear idea of what a Medusa is; but am impressed
with the notion that it is something flabby that lives in the sea.
_______________
1 His mother-in-law. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Mrs. Sarah Parkman Shaw
Russell.]
SOURCE: George R. Agassiz, Editor, Meade’s
Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness
to Appomattox, p. 225-7
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