HEADQUARTERS 54TH REGT.
O. V. INF.,
CAMP CHEWALLA, MISS., June
10, 1862.
MY DEAR WIFE:
We have marched some fifteen miles beyond Corinth, and in a
few moments shall proceed on our march to Grand Junction, some twenty miles
from here and on the route to Memphis. I remained in occupation of Corinth
three days, and was succeeded by General Halleck, who now occupies the quarters
I left. The papers have scandalously falsified, as they usually do, the
movements of Sherman's Division. A man in John Groesbeck's regiment claims the
rather barren honor of flying the first flag over Corinth, when the fact is
that mine, which was the first by two hours and forty minutes to enter the
town, had been floating for that length of time. The town was under guard by my
troops, and Major Fisher was acting as Provost Marshal (a post from which he
was only the day before yesterday relieved) at the time the troops who claimed
the credit entered. So much for newspapers, which are a tissue of falsehood and
misrepresentations. These things I know you care nothing about, and indeed I
would hardly take the trouble to explain except to avoid the absurdity which
would attach to my former letters, if you believe the newspapers.
The weather is becoming pretty warm, though the nights
continue cool, indeed I may say cold, for two or three blankets are
comfortable, and there are no mosquitoes. We do not suffer so much from the
wood ticks and jiggers as farther back. I am told that our march will lie
through a high and tolerably fertile country, a matter to be much desired. Since
our occupancy of Tennessee, all supplies have been scarce, the country people
very poor and bereft of everything in the way of eatables. I hardly know what
keeps them from starvation. . . . We think the back of the rebellion is broken
in the Southwest, but we keep up a constant vigilance, for the foe is
insidious. Beauregard's army must have been a good deal demoralized before the
evacuation of Corinth, if we may believe the accounts of deserters and
prisoners.
I suppose our destination is Memphis. They may make a stand
against us on the way. We are looking anxiously for action from McClellan. Our
army is the great centre, his the left, and the forces in Arkansas the right
wing, and we ought to move forward together. We shall be victorious, we shall
conquer, but we shall never subjugate this people. My opinions in this behalf,
so often expressed, and more than a year ago, have never changed. They are a
people very little understood at the North; their bitter hostility to the North
will never change, certainly not with this generation; they have learned to
fear us and to hate.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 214-5
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