Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to Elizabeth Budd Smith, November 1, 1861

REGIMENTAL HEADQUARTERS 54TH R. O. V. U. S. A.,
CAMP DENNISON, OHIO, Nov. 1, 1861.

Stephen1 is to the fore and doing well. He plays many parts, hostler, body servant, cook, groom, laundress, seamstress, secretary, steward, and boy about the tent, and has taken to soldiering with such a vim that half the time when I want him I find him standing on his head with a musket between his teeth, swallowing a sword or plunging a bayonet into a zouave. He carries arms openly and above board to his great delight, the only drawback to his perfect happiness being the disability in the way of uniform — an officer's, of course — for he has an unearthly, morbid, and uncontrollable contempt for a private soldier, whom he looks upon as little better than a dog.

I have just received a letter from the Adjutant-General notifying me that the Governor of Ohio has promoted me to the colonelcy, so I suppose I am a step higher in the estimation of somebody. One thing is certain, my boys and I have got as bloody a set of preaching, praying, stealing, fighting, riproaring zouaves as the war turns out. . . .  You would laugh sometimes if you were here to listen to the rascals yelling . . . for the "old Colonel," as they call me.
__________

1 His body servant.

SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 176

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