London, August 5, 1861 We received yesterday the news of our defeat at Bull’s Run, and today your letter and John’s with some papers have arrived. Though I do not see that this check necessarily involves all the serious consequences that you draw from it, I am still sufficiently impressed by it to decide me to take a step that I have for some time thought of. If you and John are detained from taking part in the war, the same rule does not apply to me. I am free to act as I please, and from the taste I have had of London life, I see no reason for my sacrificing four years to it. . . .
I wish you, then, on the receipt of this to go to some one in authority and get a commission for me, if you can; no matter what, second, third Lieutenant or Ensign, if you can do no better. They ought to be willing to let me have as much as that. If you can induce the Governor to promise this, see if you can find some fellow I know for a Captain. They say Horace Sargent is going home immediately to raise a regiment. I would serve under him and perhaps other Boston fellows would be mustered under him so as to make it pleasant. If you decide ultimately to go in as Captain, I could serve under you. At any rate I wish to have a commission, and if you succeed in arranging it, let me know at once, by telegraph, if you can. I can be on the way home in three weeks from this time, almost. A day’s notice is ample for me here, and as I know nothing of war or drill and don’t care to learn a drill here that I might have to unlearn, it will be necessary for me to begin at once. I don’t know that I should n’t start tomorrow and march in on you with this letter, if it were n’t that I don’t like to be precipitate, and that I want to watch things here for a while. I presume there will be restlessness here, though I still believe that England will prove herself more our friend than we suppose. . . .
I wish you to understand that I am in earnest and that if you can get me the place and don’t, I shall try to get it by other means. As for reasons for it, your own arguments apply with double force to me. Until now I have thought it my duty to do what I have done. But as the reasons why I should stay decrease, the reasons for going into the army increase, and this last battle turns the scale. It makes no difference whether you go or not. I am the youngest and the most independent of all others, and I claim the right to go as younger son, if on no other grounds.
You need not apprehend difficulty on this side. . . . If [your reply] is favorable I shall leave here in the first steamer, and the first positive knowledge they will have of it here, will be simultaneous with my departure. Papa will not interfere. He never does, in cases where his sons choose to act on their own responsibility, whatever he may think. Mamma has been preaching the doctrine too long to complain if it hits her at last.
We are going on as usual here except that we have got into our new house which is a great improvement. I have two large rooms on the third story which I have been making comfortable. Braggiotti is here; dines with us tomorrow.