After the battle of Ball's Bluff, seeing in detail the other and the hideous side of war in the mutilation of the human frame, and the awful horror of wounds, Carleton took a long ride through Eastern Maryland to look at the rebel batteries along the lower Potomac and to study the roads, the food products, and the black and white humanity of the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac regions, besides informing himself as to the Union flotilla. In the absence of active military operations, he wrote of the religious life of the soldiers. He was appalled at the awful profanity around him, and his constant prayer to God was for strength to resist the demoralizing influences around him, which seemed to him a hell on earth. His wife's words followed him "like a strain of music," and "the infinite purity of Jesus" was his inspiring influence. He made himself thoroughly acquainted with the New England regiments, and studied the details in the "mosaic of the army." He became so expert in studying the general composition of the regiments, their physical appearance, and ways of life, peculiarities of thought, speech, and action, that usually within five minutes he could tell from what State, and usually from what locality a regiment had come. He writes: "A regiment from Vermont is as unlike a regiment from Pennsylvania almost as a pea from a pumpkin. Both are excellent. Both are brave. Both will fight well; but in the habits of life, in modes of doing a thing, they are widely different." "Just look at the division that crosses the Potomac, and see the mosaic of McClellan's army. Commencing on the right there is McCall's division, one grand lump of Pennsylvania coal and iron. There is Smith's division, containing a block of Vermont marble; then Porter's tough conglomerate of Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island; then McDowell's, a splendid specimen of New York; then Blenker's, a magnificent contribution from Germany, with such names as Stahl, Wurnhe, Amsburg, Bushbeck, Bahler, Steinwick, Saest, Betje, Cultes D'Utassy, Von Gilsa, and Schimmelpfennig, who talk the language of their Fatherland, sing the Rhine songs, and drink a deluge of lager beer,--slow, sure, reliable men, of the stock that stood undismayed when all things were against them, in the times of Frederick the Great, who lost everything except courage, and, that being invincible, regained all they had lost. Then there are the Irish brigades and regiments from a stock which needs no words of praise, for their deeds are written in history. Without enumerating all the divisions, we see Yankees, Germans, Irish, Scotch, Italians, Frenchmen, Norwegians, and Dutchmen,--all in one army; and, grandest spectacle of all, moved by one common impulse to put down this rebellion, and to save for all future time the principle upon which this government is founded."