Thursday, July 3, 2014

Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to Eliza Walter Smith, June 3, 1863

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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