Major Wilder Dwight: July 26, 1861

Harper's Ferry, July 26, 1861.

We are here waiting on Providence, and holding on to this corner of Virginia by the skin of our teeth. I am not uneasy, for I do not care whether it comes or not; but why Beauregard with his large force should not kick our broken column into Maryland I do not see. This is not a cheerful view, but it is reasonable at least. You conclude, do you not? that the South has still got the start of us in preparation and in energy. Hope now hangs on McClellan, who has a prestige that will enable him to revive the spirit that belongs to our army. Manassas shows three things: First, our infantry, even in its present loosely organized condition, is better than theirs; our foot-soldiers will face and drive theirs. Second, our artillery outweighs theirs; and batteries are to be silenced, not stormed. Third, cavalry gives them great advantage. We must have more cavalry. In fact, we must create and organize a well-appointed army and armament: our “rash levied numbers” are mere numbers, not forces.

I seem to myself, here on the spot, to realize afresh the immensity of our task. I pity the statesman who is to recreate liberty and order upon the ashes of this civil war. You cannot form any idea of the real significance of civil war, without being in the midst of its experience, as we have been. I do hope that the Union will have power to shorten it, and I regard the disaster of last Sunday chiefly important because it checks the reaction which was restoring men in these Border States to their courage and allegiance. Panic and terrorism are doing their worst here, and they are terrible agencies in such times as these.

SOURCE: Elizabeth Amelia Dwight, Editor, Life and Letters of Wilder Dwight: Lieut.-Col. Second Mass. Inf. Vols., p. 57-8