Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to Elizabeth Budd Smith, March 1, 1863


Headquarters Second Brigade, Second Division,
Fifteenth Army Corps, March 1, 1863.
My Dear Wife:

I am much indebted to the Sisters of St. John for their prayers in my behalf, and you must so tell them from me. Ask them to take good care of our poor wounded soldiers. We have no Sisters in this army. Is not this strange? I have seen some two or three women on the hospital boats, but they are poor concerns. Catholic Sisters would be a mercy in ministering to our hospital. No tongue can tell or mind conceive the anguish and neglect and suffering of the sick and dying soldiers in camp — and their graves! such graves! I fear from your remark of Sergeant White that he reports me as being profane. I trust not. I sometimes do get a little mad, and they say I make the fur fly, and swear the hair off the men's heads, but the recording angel sheds tears so copiously in these sad times that a few must fall on my page of errors.

I can't help being amused when I hear the officers and orderlies ask outside my tent if the old general is in, or how is the old general to-day. I think my heart and feelings are fresh yet, though they are circumscribed.

SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 278

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