HEADQUARTERS 54TH REGT.
O. V. U. S. A.,
Sept. 23, 1861.
You have now two great causes of anxiety, your grandfather
and your husband. His life or death you cannot in any wise control but must accept
the dispensation of Providence. For me have no fear, lay aside all anxiety.
Life with me has been a battle from my youth. I am familiar with and almost
rejoice at the conflict. I have been preserved from terrible dangers that have
beset my pathway. My life has many a time been not worth a straw. I have passed
through flood and field. Have felt the knife of the assassin and almost the
ball of the would-be murderer, and yet I am alive now for some end. No battle,
no exposure, no responsibility can be put upon me now greater than what I have
passed through. I may fail and I may fall, but I have full faith that there is
an end to be accomplished by me. Therefore you should have no fear for me now
that you had not before the war began, and the same faith that the good God
will preserve me in the field or on the warpath, who had me in his holy keeping
when far below the surface of the briny deep. I know this is poor consolation
to offer to a lonely wife, fainting and feeble and sore beset by troubles, but
it is consolation, nevertheless, if you give it due consideration.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 174-5
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