Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to Elizabeth Budd Smith, June 22, 1863

Headquarters Dept. Of The Tenn.,

Near Vicksburg, Miss., June 22, 1863.

I am ordered upon special and delicate business which may cause me absence from headquarters and mail facilities for some days and perhaps some weeks, and write now that you may not be worried, if you do not hear from me with the usual regularity, and in any event to reassure you from any fears for my personal safety.

I have been for a week or more past in close and intimate, I may say almost confidential communication with General Grant; not detached by formal order from my regimental command, but virtually for temporary purposes. I don't know what my future status in the army may be. You must not expect me home soon; perhaps not till the political aspect in Ohio demands the presence of troops there, which from recent events, I conjecture is a time not far distant.

In my letter covering the copy of my official report of the recent engagement I forwarded you some time since, I forgot to give you special caution not to publish the same; never show or publish, except to confidential friends, anything of an official character I may send for your edification. The rule upon this matter is peremptory with the War Department, and must be respected.

Vicksburg is sure to be ours I think not very many days hence; how long, no one can tell, but it is most surely invested. Its garrison is slowly but surely wearing out. Johnston's movements are mysterious; we are always prepared for him.

McClernand . . . is at last superseded. We are most thankful; it will doubtless raise a good deal of a breeze.

P. S.—I enclose a slip; in many respects the account is defective, in all partial; take it as a whole, it gives a more fair account than any I have seen in the papers of the affair. My report is in all respects strictly true. I fought under General Grant's own eye; his report was submitted to, and pronounced upon by General Sherman before I forwarded it. The great attack was made on the 29th; that is the first attack. You will hardly credit what I am about to write, but it is also strictly true, that the attack of that day was made by two thirds of one tenth of the whole force of Grant. That is, the Second Division of the Fifteenth Army Corps, General Sherman, was the only one who obeyed the order; and what I am about to write will be testified to by General Ewing of the Third Brigade, only that the Second Brigade, the 13th Regulars of the First Brigade, and two regiments of the Third Brigade were all that went in. In point of fact, save by the 13th Regulars, I was alone and unsupported. The history of these matters will some day be given to the world, truthful, unvarnished.

Well, as a whole, this account is fair enough and worth reading. But no account, written or verbal, can give anybody the slightest conception of the affair; you might as well try to describe the falls of Niagara.

SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 306-7