Monday, July 20, 1863.
My Dearest Mary:
Hurray! I have just got the telegram. Vicksburg surrendered on the glorious
Fourth. “Good,” as Turner Sargent says. The details are, of course, wanting. We
shall not receive the papers containing the Gettysburg battle history until
Thursday. There can be no doubt, however, that Lee has been tremendously
licked. Meade occupied his headquarters after the battle, and has since been
pursuing him for sixty miles.
Meade seems to me to be a trump, the man we have been
looking for ever since the war began. What a tremendous responsibility it was
for him to be placed at the head of the army at the eleventh hour, in the very
face of the chief rebel general and their best army! So far as we can yet
judge, he has acted with immense nerve, rapidity, skill, and I think has
achieved a very great success. To us who know the country the telegram says
simply, “Lee, after losing 30,000 men [probably 15,000], is trying to get off
into Virginia as fast as he can. He may offer battle if he can't get across the
Potomac before Meade catches him. If not, not, and if not, why not?” I have
never felt so sanguine about our affairs since the very beginning. To be sure,
I never believed, as you know, in the fudge about Baltimore and Washington, but
one could n't help the fidgets when all the world in Europe was sounding the
rebel trumpets in such a stunning way.
Now, if Lee is able to do us much damage, all I can say is
that I shall be very much astonished. I suppose he will get back to Winchester,
and so to the Rappahannock, with a good deal of bacon and other provender, and
then claim a great victory. There is no meaning at all in that bit in the
telegram about Buford and Kilpatrick's cavalry being repulsed. Obviously they
were only reconnoitering in force to find out where the enemy was, and it could
only have been an insignificant skirmish, such as happens daily. If there is
any truth in the story about “Vice-President” Stephens wishing to come to
Washington, it must have been something about negro troops. Now that we must
have taken in Pennsylvania and Vicksburg at least 20,000 prisoners, I do hope
the President will issue an unmistakable edict about that hanging officers of
black troops. There couldn't be a better time.
Devotedly and
affectionately,
J. L. M.
_______________
* During a short absence to meet their second daughter on
her return from America. See p. 344.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 338-9
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