Camp Near Memphis, Oct. 23, 1862.
My Dear Daughters:
I must address you together as I would talk to you. Would to
God that I could see you and talk to you; yet, perhaps, it is better I should
not. I should love you too well and you would be taken away from me, or the
petty cares of every day would make me appear less tender in my manner than I
am in heart. You will always love me, I know, whatever distance or time
separates.
I am in very great trouble and grief this morning, and
cannot write as cheerfully as I could wish. My favorite horse “Bell” was stolen
from me two days ago and to me his loss is irreparable. He is the best and
handsomest horse I ever saw. In all my experience of horses, whether belonging
to others or myself, I have never known his equal. He had improved very much
the past year, even amid the vicissitudes of the campaign, and had become
thoroughly trained in all his duties. He was the horse par excellence of
the army, in whom all officers and men alike of all the different regiments and
brigades took equal pride. No one seemed to grudge or envy me the ownership of
him. He was a creature of beauty that seems to be a joy to all. He knew me and
loved me like a child, and would always neigh and stretch out his neck to be
fondled whenever I approached him, and rejoiced when I mounted him. He carried
me through both days at Shiloh and many a skirmish since over the long marches
under the burning summer sun, always with high courage, gallant and enduring,
never complaining for food or water, though often deprived of both. I have
slept many and many a night under a tree with his bridle in my hand. I believe
under God's mercy I owe my life to him. Money could not have bought him from
me, nor friendship parted us, and now to lose him in this pitiful way is almost
more than I can bear. If he had fallen in battle I would have accepted his loss
as the fate of war, but to be stolen, disfigured, branded, passed from hand to
hand like a common pad, I could almost cry like a very baby when I think of it.
He was never sold, his owner kept him from a foal till he came to my possession
and he would recognize no one but me for his master. One day during a lull in
the storm of battle (it was at Russell House, the last engagement I was in) I
had a presentiment he would be killed. Shot and shell had fallen around us, and
partly for that presentiment, partly in abstraction and rest, I pulled some
hairs from his mane and plaited them to keep as a memento, if he should go
under. That little braid is all I have left of the proudest game horse in
America.1 Do you see, my dear daughters, I am not in the vein to
write you a very pleasant letter to-day, though the weather is delightful, the
air balmy, the woods still green, though the leaves are falling, ripened but
not frosted. It is Indian summer, but without the tints that gild the forest in
Ohio. There is a little smoky haze in the atmosphere and a peculiar rustle of
the leaves and grass, that tells the autumn is well-nigh over, yet I am told
that warm weather here runs nearly into Christmas.
______________
1 He was subsequently recovered.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 245-6
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