On Board Steamer “America,”
Milliken's Bend, June 3, 1863.
My Dear Mother:
“Once more upon the waters.” Yesterday, by order of General
Grant, through General Sherman, I left the front and, as president of a court,
reported at this point. Yesterday and to-day I have been in command of a very
fine steamboat, only occupied by myself and suite, and shall retain command as
long as I please, going and coming as I list. I hardly think an attack will
soon be made by our forces, and the relief from the terrible suffering of the
camp in the present season with scarcity of water can hardly be overestimated.
I to-day received your letter of 27th ult., with slips
enclosed, and will endeavor to answer it and the others in inverse order. You
have before this received news of my safe passage through the fiery furnace. My
report accompanying will be about the best version I can give of my part of the
affair, and then we will dismiss the subject with the sole remark that I wrote
my report in the hot sun and under fire, seated upon a stump, in about two
hours, and the draft I send you is not to say improved by the blundering
stupidity of my clerk. Therefore, if it is not as artistic a production as you
would like, you must blame the enemy, not me. I had as lieve write in a
hornet's nest as anywhere within range of their sharpshooters, for they give an
officer no peace, and don't have much regard for a private soldier.
I don't think Rosecrans will go to the Potomac. I am very
sure neither Grant nor Sherman will give the world any such evidence of
insanity; neither of the latter care much about being heroes — certainly not of
the sort that army makes. General Grant told me he received your letter,
which he complimented as being very patriotic, and was surprised to learn I had
a mother, having always classed me, I suppose, in the same category with “Topsy.”
General Sherman might have received, read, and carried one from you in his
pocket for six months, seeing me every day meanwhile, and yet not say a word
about it, and then, at the end of six months recite the contents from memory — that
's his way. No doubt he received it. Both those gentlemen are always polite to
me, both are doubtless my friends, as friendships go in the army; but unless
you see them as I do, you could form no conception of the magnitude of the
enterprise, the herculean labor they are forced to perform, the immense
interests they have at their control, or the numbers who claim friendship with
and acts of friendship from them. I have little right to claim more than my
share and am abundantly satisfied if I receive even justice. They have both
behaved very handsomely to me, and I think General Grant, in assigning me to my
present very honorable and most responsible position, has been actuated by a
desire to give me some relief even if only for a brief season; that both he and
Sherman feel keenly a regret that the Administration has overlooked me. I
certainly have nothing to complain of, nobody to find fault with, unless the
President of the United States, and doubtless there are many far more worthy
than I am who suffer in silence.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 303-4
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