Thursday, February 27, 2014

Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to Mrs. Eliza Walter Smith, December 14, 1861

HEADQUARTERS 54TH REGT. O. V. U. S. A.,
CAMP DENNISON, OHIO, Dec. 14, 1861.
MY DEAR MOTHER:

It will not be so difficult for me to get my regiment into the field as you imagine, after they shall be in readiness to go, which I suppose will be the case in a few days. It is not to be regretted that we have not been upon the march before as we should not have been in active service, but merely passed from one camp to another with the merest skirmishing to amuse us; meanwhile it will be the better drilled.

Your political views are as usual sound, but I much believe there will be warm work in the South and in Kentucky. The blood of our people is fairly up and neither side will be satisfied without a battle. However all this is in the future and gives me no concern. My only anxiety now is to get my men in marching trim and march and keep on marching for the balance of my days.

I reckon the sword will come from Boston in due season. William Dehon wrote me that one was ordered and would be forwarded to me sometime in December.

We too have lovely weather, balmy as the first of June, and oh, mother, as I look out in the early morning or stand alone at sunset upon some hillside, I too miss the gentle smile, the faded form; everything is here to remind me of him.1 I dare not write of him. I loved him very dearly, more than I have loved anybody in the world, I believe, except perhaps you. I am sure I loved him much more than I have ever loved my own children — but I must check these rising feelings. I cannot permit myself to dwell upon those who have gone. I turn to this band of men about me, a large family who look to me for guidance, support, and succor — everything is abandoned. I feel as if I had cut loose from the world or all that part of it that has gone before.
__________

1 His brother, Charles W. G. Smith, who died in New York as Secretary of the Union Defence Committee, May, 1861, aged twenty years.

SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 177

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