1861 October 10 Richmond [Va.]

My Dear Mary [Pope Randolph]

Your last letter had
not reached Yorktown when I left
there a week ago yesterday. I am afraid
therefore that it miscarried, as Nelly
says that it was written before she left
Edgehill. After escaping sickness until
almost in sight of frost I contracted
a fever from too much exposure to a very
hot sun, while mounting guns in some
new batteries erected to welcome our
Northern brethren if their next
expedition should visit us. I got
well and [?] and on receiving
orders to come here on Ordnance duties
I undertook to be very smart and took
a sail goat in order to connect
with the railroad. Unfortunately

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the wind failed and the tide turned
against me, the consequence was
that instead of being three hours and
a half I was nine hours on the river
in a burning sun and a drenching
rain, and landed at Westpoint
too late for the cars and with my
fever back upon me in full vigor. I have
recovered again and do not mean
to relapse if I can help it, and I shall not
go back until this rainy spell is over.

We are going into Winter quarters
immediately, on a line extending
from the Pocosin River to the
mouth of Warwick River. The nearest
point in the line is eight miles
from Yorktown our place of deposite
and as the Country is stripped of
provisions and forage, everything
that we and our horses eat will

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have to be carried over roads which
in the winter time are bottomless. I
should not be surprised if we had to
use pack mules. We shall build log
huts and there will be no want of fire
wood, starvation therefore is the only
thing we have to fear. The enemy
unless largely reinforced will hardly
venture out and if he should we
are so superior in cavalry and
artillery that we must defeat him.

I feel more uneasiness about the
winter quarters of the Armies at
Manassas and in the West, where the
climate is much more severe and
the means of transportation not equal
to ours. Unless Genl Lee can drive
Rosencrantz out of the Kanawha
Valley it seems to me that our Army
must fall back to Lewisburg or to

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some other point where it will be possible
to subsist them. This will leave the West
in the possession of the enemy and will be
an acknowledgment that we cant drive
them out for the present. Next Spring the
time of nearly all of our Va troops will be
out and even more of them will go home.
Many will return, but it will be in new
corps where the chance of promotion will
attract them.

We shall then have to organize anew
in the face of the organized forces of the
enemy. This is the dark side of the picture but there are
lights as well as shades in every picture.
A draft may and should be resorted to,
our militia should be [?], as in
France, Prussian and in all military
nations, and the burden of the war should
be more equally distributed. We shall have
an abundance of experienced officers and
even large portions of the men will have
seen service. Our troops therefore will not be
a mere mob as they were at the beginning of
this campaign. Summer will relieve the Southern
States from fear of invasion and turn the tide
of their strength this way again. Our manufac
ture of arms and munitions steadily carried on

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all the winter will enable us to take the field with a better
equipped army than heretofore, and the enormous expenditure

[in top margin of page 1]
of our antagonists
will begin to tell
upon their strength.
All this supposes
an indecisive
winter campaign
in the South
Of course if they
worst us badly
than the
advantage will
be on their side
when the campaign
opens next
Spring.
They may
overrun our
frontier States
and plunder

[in left hand margin of page 2]
our coasts but as for conquering us the thing is an impossibility. There is no

[in right hand margin of page 2]
instance in history of a people as numerous as we are inhabiting a

[in left hand margin of page 3]
country so extensive as ours being subjugated if true to themselves.

[in right hand margin of page 3]
Dont be cast down therefore if we have reverses but look upon as
chastenings which will benefit us. I long to see you all and would give

[in left hand margin of page 4]
my right hand to be able to go to Albemarle. Goodbye and God bless you my dear Molly
Give my love
to all
G[eorge] W[ythe] R[andolph]

George Wythe Randolph, 1818-1867, Thomas Jefferson's youngest grandson and an alumnus of the University of Virginia, was a lawyer in Albemarle County before the war. He was part of a special three man delegation from Virginia to President Lincoln in the spring of 1861 in a last unsuccessful effort to avert conflict. Like many other families the Randolphs were split by the war. Sons of his sister, Ellen Wayles Randolph Coolidge who married a Bostonian, served in the Union army.MSS 5533