Camp Near Fairfax Station,
January 10, 1863.
Our rainy season has begun at last, I think; to-day it has
poured. Everything looks muddy and damp enough. If it continues for a week as
it did last winter at this time, mark my words, there will be no more
campaigning in Virginia this winter. We are well settled now in a comfortable
camp, with a strong probability of staying here for a while.
I agree in part with what you say about the administration,
but I don't fear an armed interference in six months or six years. 1 feel
certain that England will do nothing but stand aloof and badger both the North
and South, and it cannot be policy for France to quarrel with us, it seems to
me. As for what foreign nations may think of the corruption of the Government,
I don't care; I've made up my mind that there never was a government in time of
war, European or any other on the face of the earth, that wasn't as corrupt as
corruption itself; all history shows it. If Napier in his “Peninsular War” is
good authority, there never were more dishonesty, knavery, and bribery in a
government than there were in England's at that time. That war was managed, at
first, till Wellington took hold of it, very much as ours has been; generals
were interfered with as ours have been, and newpapers’ stories and home
criticisms were believed by the people sooner than official dispatches.
From the first of March to the first of June, I predict that
there will be the liveliest fighting we have ever seen in this country, and
with good fortune, we may end the whole war and have a happy and honorable
peace. If we had any other than a conquered peace, I should never feel that I
had done with my uniform, but should always expect war and fighting. If the
South got its confederacy, I fully believe the States would be fighting among
themselves in less than five years; it is the strong military government and
their feeling about slavery that is binding them together so now; their strong
feeling about States' rights is what they will break on. I think the weakest
points in our own government are these very States' rights, which allow State Governors
to interfere and dictate to the Central Government.*
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* A ten-days' leave of absence was granted about this time
and the writer went home accompanied by Captain Shaw.
SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written
During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 118-9
