Manchester, Wednesday, 4 June 1862

Dear Mohr,

I hope you have received the P.O. Order for £2 that I sent to the Kentish Town P.O. last Friday.

So at last we learn from Anneke’s letter that on 26 April Halleck had somewhat over 100,000 men and 300 cannons, including Pope and Mitchell, and that he was awaiting the arrival of Curtis and Sigel with further reinforcements. Up to 29 April the condition of the army as a whole seems to have been tolerable; A. does not mention sickness. From this I consider the talk of sickness to be pure fabrication. Incidentally, one must say Stanton and Halleck know how to make the press and the public suspicious; after all, it is certainly easy enough for any army to have a correspondent to whom the general says what he is to write, so that the public at least gets some news. – So the great battle will probably be fought as soon as Sigel and Curtis are there. Spence’s calculation that 120,000 men are needed to keep the Border States in order is ridiculous; in Kentucky there seems to be almost no man stationed (apart, perhaps, from a training camp for recruits near Louisville, from which, however, Sigel’s corps will probably be formed) and in Nashville there were only convalescents etc., according to Anneke; otherwise, besides the armies of Halleck and McClellan, there are in the Border States only Frémont (who, as it seems, still has no army at all), Banks (who must be very weak), and McDowell, but all of these count as part of the active army. On the other hand, Spence is mistaken: 1) the armies of the Federals at this moment are certainly not 500,000 men in all, 2) they have certainly more than 90,000 men distributed along the coast. I reckon roughly as follows:

On the coast 100,000 men. At Washington 30,000 men.
Banks & Frémont 30,000 " McDowell 30,000 "
Sigel & Curtis 30,000 " Halleck 100,000 "
McClellan 80,000 " making altogether 400,000 men in the
field, to which may be added some 60,000 recruits, convalescents, and small detachments that may be distributed in Missouri, on both banks of the lower Ohio and Tennessee, and partly in the towns of the Northeast; sum total 460,000 men. I am confirmed in this by the new levy of 50,000 men, which will probably very soon be followed by a second of equal strength; they seem to want to keep the army at a normal strength of 500,000 men.

It was Stanton’s greatest blunder, and pure bravado, to stop recruiting. This has been materially very damaging, and has caused the entire loss of time at Corinth and Richmond; and morally this present revocation does still more harm – quite apart from the fact that it will be much harder now to get recruits. Otherwise there are people enough; as a result of immigration the Northern states must have at least 3-4% more of their population aged 20-35 than any other country.

For the rest, Monsieur Anneke appears in his letters as the old peevish fault-finder and wiseacre who judges the army not according to circumstances, nor according to the enemy, but according to old European schoolbook armies, and even these not as they are, but as they ought to be. The blockhead ought to think of the confusion he himself must have often enough experienced at Prussian manoeuvres.

The comedy in Berlin is becoming very amusing. The Ministry is protesting its liberalism to the Chamber, and the Chamber its royalism to the King. Embrassez-vous et que cela finisse! For the rest, it is undoubtedly a step forward that the people are becoming entangled so neatly and so quickly in parliamentary intrigue; however, the conflict will come soon enough. Very nice, too, that nothing came of the whole electoral-Hessian history until the Elector personally insulted the fair Wilhelm, and then it came to nothing all the more.

How is little Jenny?

Warm greetings to your wife and children. The thing from Eichhoff returned herewith.

Yours,
F. E. I.