On the evening of the 25th Fox, who had been frequently
telegraphed by Butler to come down to Fort Monroe, determined to go, and asked
me to go with him. We started for the Navy Yard at 5.30, passing Willard’s
while Burnside’s splendid column was moving down 14th Street across the Long
Bridge into Virginia. This is the finest looking and best appointed force I
have ever yet seen. A little gorgeous and showy, reminding one of the early
regiments who went shining down to Bull Run and the Peninsula as if to a picnic.
The 3d N. J. Cavalry looked fine and yellow in their new cloaks and gold-braided
breasts. The officers looked so superbly outlandish that it surprised one to
hear them speaking in a Yankee accent, pure American as Cash Clay calls it. The
black regiments looked well, and marched better than others — as in fact they
always do.
We went down the river among the twilight “shadders” and got
some fish and dined off shad roe and shad. Fox had brought with him some of his
choice Oolong tea. . . . We got to Fortress Monroe in the morning, and Welles
and I visited the “Iroquois,” Capt. Raymond Rogers, while Fox went to see the
General. Coming ashore we skirmished for some time about the walls of the
Fortress before we could find the right entrance. We went in; saw Schaffer and
Kent who was lounging round with an air intensely ennuyeé, and who said: — “There
are plenty of indications here which to a green hand would presage an early
movement; but we blasé fellows don't seem to see it; we are familiar
with large promise and scanty performance.”
Joined Butler and Fox on the ramparts. Butler said he was
walking there for the first time in several months; preferring to take necessary
exercise on horseback. He spoke highly of the negro troops — especially of
their walking powers. They start off and trot slouchingly without wasting any muscle
in grace of action, he said, illustrating the shuffling step, on the ramparts,
bending his knees, and dragging his feet over the oniony grass. He spoke of the
delight with which Bob Ould ate the good dinners he got while at the Fort — saying
that one breakfast he got at Shaffers would have cost $2,000 in Richmond. . . .
. I had a good deal of a talk with Shaffer, one of “the best staff a man was
ever blessed with, — Strong Turner Shaffer and Weitzell” as Butler says. Shaffer
is sanguine about the coming movement. “We will fasten our teeth,” he says, “on
his line of supplies, and he must leave his positions to come and beat us off;”
— relying on Grant’s not being the man to let that be done quietly. . . .
Fox seemed troubled sorely by the prospect. He fears the
details have not been sufficiently studied; that the forces are to bulge ahead
and get badly handled; that they rely on help from the navy in places where the
navy cannot possibly help, — but rather “will be useless as an elephant with
his trunk unscrewed and his tusks unshipped;” that going up the James between
the precipitous banks, a few riflemen on the banks will produce a panic that
nothing can remedy. He seemed surprised that the navy should not have been
informed of the intended movement until to-day; or that Grant should have
sanctioned, and concluded that G. must be letting the thing slide on without
suggestion from him, to squelch it before it was consummated, or, relying upon
his other plans, might have given this column up to the fate of a
reconnoissance in force which will have accomplished its object if it diverts
from his front a force large enough to destroy it. . . . .
SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and
Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 183-6; See Michael Burlingame and John R.
Turner Ettlinger, Editors, Inside Lincoln’s White House,: the complete Civil
War Diary of John Hay, p. 189-91 for the full entry.
