Headquarters Second Brigade, Second Division,
Fifteenth Army Corps,
“young's Point,” Before Vicksburg, Feb. 4, 1863.
My Dear Mother:
I could write much on these army matters and the course of
events here if it were proper for me to do so; but, of course, my lips are
sealed and my pen tabooed. You must rest assured that all the newspaper
accounts you have seen of the late battles, and the movements of the Army of
the Mississippi, are basely, utterly false. So much has been admitted by the
correspondent of the New York . . . in
my presence to General Sherman. Courts martial will develop strange facts. All
that you read in the newspapers will only serve to mislead you and confuse your
mind. Great plans cannot be revealed. Few of the generals themselves know them.
The newspaper men, dangerous to the army as spies giving information to the
enemy, closely restricted and carefully watched, nevertheless manage to mingle
undetected with the residue of the horde of base camp followers who are always
at the heels of the army. Provoked at the restrictions placed upon them, by
common agreement they hound down with infamous slander the generals from whom
the orders against them emanate. Thus the scoundrel . . . the correspondent of
the New York . . . has admitted by letter to General Sherman, as well as
verbally in my presence, not only that his article was false, and malicious, and
based upon false information received from parties interested in defaming
General Sherman and his command, but that he renewed the old story of his
insanity for the purpose of gratifying private revenge. . . . Our country is in an awful condition ; we are
verging rapidly upon anarchy. Government has almost ceased to exist save in
name. An immense army will be demoralized and crumble by its internal opposing
forces. A united people have only to fold their arms and calmly bide the event.
God help us, and forgive that political party which sowed the wind, the fruits
of which we now reap. This much and this alone I have to say. A soldier has
naught to do with politics; the nearer he approaches a machine, an animal
without volition, the more valuable he becomes to the service, and perhaps the
greater part of our present difficulties grow out of the fact that our soldiers
are too intelligent, for they will talk and they will write, and read the
papers. Our Army of the Mississippi, and particularly our gallant “Old
Division,” have the firmest faith and the most implicit reliance upon Sherman
and Grant. Sherman is a splendid soldier, a most honorable gentleman, a pure
patriot. Would to God we had more like him to battle for the right. I earnestly
pray God he may not be sacrificed. This new infusion I know nothing about.
McClernand has been sent off; he is out of place here. Brigadiers have come and
are coming. I shall soon be superseded by some one of them, or General Stuart
will be compelled to give way and I to him. No change of this kind will be
cheerfully submitted to by my command. I have the most substantial evidence
that I possess their affection and confidence. You speak about my resigning; it
would be utterly impossible for me to resign, if I desired to do so, and an
effort on my part to have my resignation accepted would ensure my lasting
disgrace. An officer cannot resign in the face of the enemy. But I do not want
to resign. With all its terrible hardships and privations, greater than tongue
can tell, or pen describe, the life of a soldier is dear to me. I love its
dangers and excitements. I am proud of, and delighted with the applause which
even a temporary success meets. I am relieved of the miserable, wretched
chicanery that surrounds the civilian. I rejoice in the free air. I take kindly
to the nomadic life that a field service compels. The romance of chivalry is
realized, the ideality of my youth and early manhood brought into actual being.
The war horse and the sabre, the glitter of the soldier's trappings, the
stirring strains of martial music, the flashing eye, the proud, high bearing,
the bivouac fire, the canteen, the song and jest, the perilous scout, the wary
picket, the night march, all familiar — this is my life. What I read of, till
my cheeks tingled and my eyes suffused, I now do and my comrades do, and like
Harry Percy, feel able to “pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon.”
How long we shall stay here, God knows; it is a horrid place
now, what it will be in the spring, none can tell; a long fiat swamp a foot
above or below — I can't tell which — the level of the Mississippi, which we are
fighting to keep out. That portion not covered with a growth of brake and
timber is completely so by cockle burr, that grows to an enormous height and
presents an almost impenetrable mass of those little prickly burrs that get
into the manes and horsetails, the same kind we have at home, but fearfully
exaggerated in size and numbers. It is not quite the season, but after a very
little while we shall be enlivened by the pleasant society of alligators and
mocassin snakes, mud turtles and their coadjutors. Meanwhile we have every
conceivable variety of lice and small-pox, measles and mumps, and other
diseases incident to women and children. There is a species of moss you have
often heard of and which abounds in this climate — a long hanging and beautiful
moss when seen close at hand, but which waving in the forests presents a dreary
funereal aspect. It is an article of commerce, and when properly prepared is a
material for the stuffing of mattresses. Of course the men, when we camped near
where it grew, eagerly sought it to make their beds, and were much disgusted to
find it filled with lice. It has to be boiled and bottled to clean it from
vermin. So, with the moss, and the transport boats filthy in the extreme, many
of which had been hospital boats, the troops were pretty thoroughly infected
with the plagues of Egypt, all but the frogs; and the first sun, I reckon, will
make them tune their pipes.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 268-71
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