HEADQUARTERS 54TH REGT.
O. V. INF.,
CAMP NEAR MOSCOW,
TENN., Sunday, June 29,1862.
My last letter to you was dated from Lagrange yesterday
week, and written so hurriedly, for I was just on the eve of march, that I
think it must have been unintelligible. We are so hurried from point to point,
the mails so uncertain, and facilities and opportunity for writing so scant,
that it really becomes a task, or rather I should say enterprise hard to
succeed in, the getting of a letter from camp to one's friends. I wrote, if I
recollect, that we had marched from Chewalla to Lagrange, that from thence my
brigade had made a hurried descent upon Holly Springs, one of the principal
cities of Mississippi, where we expected to meet the enemy in considerable
force; that they fled at our approach; and that, returning from that point to
Lagrange, we found marching orders for Memphis, for which march I was prepared
when I wrote that letter. Our course lay through a country more fertile and
more highly cultivated than any we had met, but the weather being hot and dry,
and the road exceedingly dusty, our troops were made to suffer very much. We
accomplished nineteen miles the first day, and were halted at a town called
Lafayette. From thence we dispatched a train of fifty wagons to Memphis for
provisions, our rations having given out. These returned in safety, but a train
of cars, which was started laden with returning soldiers, was intercepted by a
force of cavalry, thrown from the track, and Colonel . . . with a number of
soldiers taken prisoner. This circumstance, together with intelligence that
Breckenridge had concentrated a force at Holly Springs, determined a
counter-march with a view of attacking him at that point, and therefore our
troops were brought where we now are, some ten miles from Lagrange and
twenty-five from Holly Springs, where we shall probably go to-morrow.
The weather is becoming very warm, many of my command are
suffering from the effects of the heat and the privations and discomforts to
which they are necessarily subjected. With the exception of camp dysentery and
diarrhoea, whatever it may be called, my own health is pretty good. The bowel
complaint is of a very singular nature, and not to be combated with the
ordinary remedies. I have suffered from it ever since the battle of Shiloh,
more or less at different times.
Major Fisher has been very sick, he is now convalescent. We
shall have a summer campaign right here in the cotton states. A furlough or
leave of absence is a thing utterly impossible, therefore I make up my mind to
stick it out. I had hoped after the evacuation of Corinth that there were hopes
of a close of the war, but these hopes have proved delusions. McClellan is
slow, we are much disappointed in his movements. As a consequence, Beauregard
and Breckenridge are rallying in the South. The people to a man and woman are
decidedly and unanimously "Secesh." We have no friends here but the
slaves. The war will be a ten years' war at the least. Ohio must lose fifty
thousand men for her quota before it is closed, and the sooner the draft is
made upon her, the better I shall be pleased. . . . The war is terrible in its
effects here. Homes destroyed, families ruptured, parted, never to meet again;
fields and farms desolated, country ravaged, people starving. God has cursed
the land. When can their evils be stayed?
There are beautiful forests and broad savannahs here; all
fruits and cereals flourish; a land for milk and honey; if peace could come,
plenty would follow. The insect life here is wonderful; such innumerable bugs
and spiders, moths and winged and crawling things you never could imagine
without seeing, while lizards and chameleons, of all sizes and colors, are
constantly in pursuit of their game. It is no unusual thing for me to drive the
lizards off my cot before I lie down at nights, and every night the spiders
crawl over me by myriads. I have been bitten by spiders but once or twice, and
with no serious effects, but I do suffer from lice, fleas, bedbugs, and
wood-ticks.
My horses are all in tolerably good condition, though they
miss their hay. There is no hay grown in this country — its place is supplied
with blades of corn. Oats do not thrive here, either, and Northern horses feel
the difference. Mine carry me very well notwithstanding, up to this time.
I like your strictures upon the newspapers, and am glad you
understand them. Newspaper articles, unless they appear over the signatures of
well-known and perfectly responsible parties, are regarded by the army, both
off1cers and privates, worthless for information upon any current event,
especially matters connected with the service. Mere puffs, they generally
emanate from paid correspondents or scribblers, whose object is to write a man
into notoriety, as they would publish a patent medicine or advertise a sale at
auction.
You would all doubtless like to know more of me and my surroundings
than I have it in my power to write. The faculty of description and vigor of
memory may make many a fortune for the striving actor in scenes such as these
transpiring about me. Every day is an incident, every night in reality a dream
of romance. The moonlight, the forest, the bugle, the sentry, the alarm, the
march, stealthy and catlike, stealing on the foe, or with loud alarm of drum
and fife and flaunting of flag, dashing down to intimidate; the bivouac, the
encampment, the gathering around the camp fires, the bottle, the pipe, the
tale, the jest, all that you read of in novels, only a good deal more so, all
these are my daily life. If one battle would suffice, but many and many a
battle must be fought, rivers of blood must yet flow, before we can herald
peace.
Well, dear children, Mamma will read this letter or a part
of it to you, and while reading it, you must reflect that father is far down
South on the line between Tennessee and Mississippi, in a large forest, on the
banks of Wolf River, in a hot climate, where the cotton grows; that he is
sitting under the shade of his tent, writing to you, surrounded by soldiers,
and all the pomp and panoply of war, that he is battling or about going into
battle to secure you the same rights and the same good government that was
secured to him and his fathers by our Revolutionary forefathers, and you must
pray for the success of his cause, and for his deliverance from the evil, and
if he should fall in the battle, you must pray for the good of his soul, but
always be tender and kind to your mother, your aunt, your teachers and friends.
God bless you all.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 217-20
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