Sunday, May 4, 2014

Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to Elizabeth Budd Smith, July 22, 1862

HEADQUARTERS 54TH REGT. O. V. INF.,
CAMP NEAR MEMPHIS, July 22, 1862.

I seize the earliest opportunity to advise you of my safe arrival at this point, now in occupation by the troops of General Sherman, as you have probably ere this learned through the newspapers. Our last marches have been tedious and the troops have suffered much from the heat of the weather. You may judge of the intensity of the heat when I tell you that as we marched our Brigade through the streets of Memphis at seven o'clock in the morning of yesterday the mercury stood at 102 degrees in the shade. To-day is cloudy and somewhat cooler, a fortunate thing for me, for as Division Officer of the Day it becomes my duty to set all the pickets, which will involve hard riding all day and night.

SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 230-1

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