I have just come from the church of St. Starr King, and have seldom appreciated the nature of the relief which many find in public religious exercises, and especially in music, so well. I suppose it is generally [348]

the case that when we are happiest, we are saddest. I have felt all the week, while the news of the fall of Richmond and all the great humiliation of the enemy—all that makes the triumph, our triumph, so complete, was coming in to us, more lonely, more like a dead man, and more wanting to be immortal, than for long before—than ever before, in some way. I have such an unfathomable yearning for my poor dead brother— that I should have lived to see this day, and he not here. And there is nothing to mitigate it here. It forces itself upon me that there is not a man in San Francisco who knows me, who begins to know me; who has the least idea what I am. Stebbins I think would do so, if I had duties with him, throwing us together. And all this makes stronger the sensation I have had much upon me here, of being an old, worn out and cast aside man. I have made up my mind to it & accept it & accept cheerfully, as a man should when his time comes. Yet I know that in respect at least of sympathy and fraternity—of comradship, it is not or need not be altogether so. And I write just to satisfy myself & school myself into the [349]satisfaction of comradship this side of death if not this side of the continent.

I suppose that there was something wrong and beyond my capacity, that my mind, and capacity of devotion and forecast, was unnaturally called upon, and over wrought and over-strained during my Washington life, and I suffer now the weakness of the unstringing of certain faculties and talents that were too long, severely and steadily bent. I have none of your capacity for making good shots every time without severe strain—and so here in California—in respect to all the emotions & spiritual labors that I had in excess in Washington. I am as a dead man. I hope it will not be so with you after the war. I hope you will taper off and subside more healthily into peace.

But, today, singing Glory! Hallelujah! with a great congregation and looking at the great flag of victory held over us, though of all with whom I ever had conscious sympathy of hope and prayer for this day I stood alone—and my heart cried back stronger than ever to my poor, sad, unhopeful brother, who alone of all the world, ever really knew me and trusted me for exactly what I was and felt, & tho’ I felt more than ever how thoroughly strangers to my real self everybody here is, and how for any purpose that my heart has had in my past life, completely disabled and dead I am—yet it seemed as if you and some others were singing Glory! Hallelujah! too, & that there might be a capacity of life in my dead bones even yet.

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You will see what all this poetasting means, I suppose. I do now. I know that it’s unreasonable & ungrateful in me to be at all gloomy and downcast & worried about myself in these times, when merely to have been allowed to live to see them is more than I could have dared to hope for not long ago. And I reproach myself that I really am obliged to strive hard to keep myself reasonably cheerful and I want to go out of myself to be joyful sympathetically.

I am not sorry I came to California. I am glad I came, although disappointed. For what chiefly weighs upon me is that I have provided so poorly for my wife & children. I can’t help seeing that I am very much broken—can never work again as I have been accustomed to, and I am not equipped with the education by which a man can work quietly & steadily and make himself useful to somebody, in every community, and people to whom I could be useful in a way not difficult and straining upon me, don’t know me, and I have no faculty of making them. I can’t make acquaintance with people with whom I have no close relations of business, of duty. I can’t turn my hand to anything, and I’ve got no recognized trade—and I think that I am liable to break down entirely and [350]suddenly—and I see that it’s the worst feature in my life—my reproach—that I have not taken good care of my family ahead. But coming to California, disappointed as I am with what has happened here, has put me in a better position in that respect, no worse and rather better—so I am not sorry I came. And I have got no more than I bargained for. I took my chance & have had not the worst luck.

But it is very tiresome to rest here in such uncertainty. On the 25th December, the Company’s New York office wrote me by direction of the Trustees a letter of approval and congratulation on my management & its success. On the 27th my drafts were protested. I came to San Francisco, on the 4th Jany when I first discovered it, to see what was the matter, regarding it as a temporary mistake, and expecting to return the same week. I have been waiting here ever since. My family at Bear Valley, where there is almost a famine, and much that is disagreeable—almost severe hardships. My wife came down at last to see me for a week. I had to let her go back alone. I have been expecting it to end every day, and am still, but I do not get one word of encouragment from New York—hardly a word of any kind. And it seems strange too not a single friend has written me since our troubles began. Not one—I have had one letter from my father & one from my sister, but even they don’t seem to be aware that the Mariposa Company has failed—and is regarded as a great swindling scheme and has ruined hundreds of poor people, who are told by one man at least to consider me as the cause of their ruin—not one word of it do they write. And no man whom I ever saw before—or who knows me and believes in me for any cause, has said one word to me in any way since this trouble came upon me. Now I see why I was so lonely when I came home from church & turned to writing to you for companionship. It was my ordinary loneliness here; aggravated by having been alone in a crowd. And the great occasion instead of lifting me out of my loneliness only buried me deeper.

But I do rejoice though nobody knows it; and I know that you do & that you know that I do, and that you think of me, as I think of you all. Do you know how I rejoice in your ability and opportunity to keep at the work? In my mind the Army has become a person and I love it as a person & I think what a happy man you are to be ministering to it as you are. I should have a great longing, if I did not train myself not to—to be with you—but I know everybody can’t—and instead of repining it’s only true & reasonable to rejoice in the opportunity I had and the recollection. I have no reasonable doubt that I did right to leave when I did—therefore I rejoice in that too.

On the whole if I was about to die now, I should say I have had a great deal more of the happiness of life than one man’s fair share, as the world goes; more very much than I expected to have and all my [351]troubles—with this loneliness—are mere superficial husks—of no consequence in a general view.

And that is really what I feel, generally and on the whole.

And when I think what this is—Mine eyes have indeed seen the coming of the Glory of the Lord—that I should be unhappy is a sin of which I thank God I do most heartily repent.

April 12th  Since writing the above we have the announcement of Lee’s surrender, at which point the telegraph breaks down—and is quite welcome to. It’s no great matter to us now if it never goes up again.

I can hardly contain myself with thanksgiving. I keep waking up all night, and disentangling the absolute facts of Sherman’s march thro’ the Carolinas, the capture of Richmond and Lee’s surrender, to assure myself where history ends and dreams begin.

Dr Bellows promised to write immediately after his return about the personal matters of the Commission. I have not had a word from him, nor from anyone else. Now, Knapp! I am not going to surrender myself to absolute estrangment and death to you all. When the war is over if not before you must write me about yourself & your family, of Profr Bache— of whom not a word have we had since the newspapers informed us that he was going to Europe—of the Commissioners individually, of Jenkins & Douglass—of Bloor I have heard recently, and more especially of the women. I can’t bear to forever lose Miss Schuyler & Miss Wormely & Miss May & the Woolseys & all. My heart’s on the Pamunkey. Of your father & mother, I had good tidings by Mr Frank Bellows. How have you got on with Stanton & how do you feel about him. I hope you hate him as I do. What has Dana been to you? What has become of Hammond? I see that Letterman is reported coming to California “on oil.” Who then is Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac?, and how has the change served you? How did Letterman get out of the Army? I want much to know what you have been doing lately—who you have been with and how you bear the great events.

My wife, is I think in better health & spirits, usually than when in Washington. The mountain campaign of which I wrote you eight or nine months ago, did us all a great deal of good. The children are doing well. The circumstances have been as favorable as possible for their healthy education.

With love & congratulations to your wife,—I reserve profanity which truth would require.