I resumed my work on the report of my speech immediately after breakfast, and tried to finish it by eleven o’clock, the hour I had promised to have it ready for the reporter. But it was not complete until a quarter of an hour later, so that I missed attendance on Divine service. There was a heavy thunder shower just at that time, but it cleared by night. Mr Neilson, the reporter did not however call until about two. I was occupied bringing up my Diary afterwards, and then took a walk with my daughter. After dinner we had Mrs Emmons and her son, and Sidney Brooks and his Wife. But my despatches arrived and the news absorbed my whole attention. In the first place came the painful details of the action at Edwards’s ferry, which distressed me the more that one of the best portions of our Massachusetts force was completely cut up in it. This grief is aggravated by the consciousness that it was like almost all the other instances, the consequence of the most fatal carelessness in the direction. To send a force across a river with most imperfect communication in its rear in case of meeting with superior numbers is the very height of folly. Yet such is the plain truth. The question who did this is not so clear. The details of this slaughter were so harrowing that I was kept awake thinking of them. But there was other intelligence that made me not a little anxious. Mr Seward writes that the French Minister has intimated that some provision must soon by made for a supply of cotton, which will if persevered in as a demand once more change the face of the question—and my son Charles writes me that John is very anxious to take a place in the War, instead of following up his settled avocations. On the whole I have never yet had so gloomy accounts. God only knows what may further in reserve.277