ON BOARD STEAMER “SUNNY
SOUTH,”
AT MOUTH OF YAZOO RIVER,
Dec. 26, 1862.
It has been usual with me, before going into battle, to
write to you, and almost as usual when I have come out of battle unscathed, as
heretofore has been my fate, to destroy the letters so written. This letter I
shall commit to transportation immediately after it is prepared and shall be
unable to withdraw it in any event that may occur. The public prints will have
stated so much relative to the expedition of which my command forms a part as
to make it unnecessary for me to comment. With such vague knowledge as I
possess of the movements and position of the enemy, unless he capitulates, I
believe we shall have a desperate fight and the chances are even that I shall
fall. We must take Vicksburg, if at all, by storm, unless it is surrendered.
Christmas day, yesterday, was warm; this morning, at
breakfast, the same old gray-coated housefly that I used to stab on the window
pane, when a boy, came to share my plate. I have doffed my coat and vest; it is
decidedly warm. We are really in Dixie, seventeen hundred miles away from you.
The land of the cotton and the cane, orange groves and myrtle. Mayhap I 'll
tell you of it in time to come, of the long waving moss, and the cypress. Rapid
and turbid and broad and deep rolls the Father of Waters onward to the ocean,
the eternal waters.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 250-1
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