Headquarters Second Brigade, Second Div.,
Fifteenth Army Corps,
“Young's Point,” La., April 9, 1863.
My Dear Bessie:
How is the little baby brother? I think of him a good deal,
and how anxious you all must have been for his recovery. I have had something
to worry me here too in my other great family. I have a good many children to
look after here, and many of them get sick and some of them die. Perhaps mother
will recollect a letter she received from my aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Seeds, a
letter, I think, she did not answer, but which was written just after the
battle of Chickasas Bluffs to apprise her of my safety. The writer was a brave,
gallant young man of singular beauty and fine address, a graduate of Delaware
College, who had enlisted in my old Zouave regiment as a private and from
principle, for his father was rich. A long time I sought promotion for him, and
at last succeeded, and when I had obtained his commission, I placed him on my
staff to have him near my person. He rode well and boldly, with a firm seat and
a light hand and in both battles staid by my side, never leaving me but to take
an order. At Arkansas Post he was so dashing and conspicuous as to bring cheers
from both armies. Well, when we debarked at “Young's Point” I was harassed with
much responsibility, and far in front had to fight the enemy, and the elements,
and the great Mississippi River, and for two days and two nights hardly
dismounted save to change horses. I forgot or was careless to think that my
aides were not iron, or steel, or capable of my own endurance, and instead of
changing them as I changed my horses, let them stay with me, and the third day
they sickened, and poor Frank never got well. He pined and weakened day by day —
wouldn't give up, game to the very last — and I nursed him as best I could in
his tent, but it was very cold and wet, raining almost every day. His disease
was typhoid, not much pain, but wasting fever, and the poor fellow would come
out with his overcoat and sit shivering by the camp fire between the showers;
couldn't drink whiskey, or smoke tobacco, our only luxuries; couldn't eat, and
would lie awake all night, and listen to the shells hissing over us (for we
were close to the canal and within range of it, and in those early days of the
siege they harassed us) and look up at me with his great eyes glistening with
fever. I had no comfort for him, only a word of cheer, but I didn't think he
would die, and so at last when we thought he was a little better, and he had
been sick four long weeks, I had him carried down to the boat on a stretcher,
placed on what they call a hospital boat — that is, a steamer with the whole
cabin fixtures taken out, no state rooms, but in their place, long lines of
cots, and some boats carry a thousand. There I disposed him as comfortably as I
could and took leave, he weeping, for he was tenderly attached to me, and I
gave him letters to you all, told him to go to the house and you would nurse
him and when he got well to come back, and we would ride together again in
battle, saw that he had some money and left him, and to-day they write me he is
dead. He only got as far as Memphis; relapse, hospital, and — “he has fought
his last battle.” Only twenty-five,
tall, finely formed, beautiful bright chestnut hair, red chestnut, frank open
countenance, the soul of honor; and so they drop away from me, and all my best
men, all I love most, are shot down or die.
Did I write you about the flowers and the birds, the sweetest,
most eloquent birds you ever heard, and the prince of all of them, the mocking
bird, sings all the day and of a verity all the night long. You couldn't hear
the mocking bird in perfection anywhere but here, and wild; I ought not to say
wild, either, for the pert, game little rascal is as tame as a chicken; he’ll
just hop out of your way, and that's all — but what a flood of song he pours
forth! There's one fellow who has built his nest not far off upon the topmost
limb of a fig tree, a little way from my tent, and there he has whistled since
before reveille this morning everything that any bird ever whistled before him,
making the welkin ring with his melody. He has to help the thrush and the red
bird and the black bird and the rice bird; but altogether. They have a royal
time of it while the figs are ripening and the roses bloom; the delicate sweet
roses, we used to cultivate with so much care, pout their lips and ask for
kisses in March, and keep on blooming on great bushes till December. All the
monthlies, the Giant, Marie Antoinette, Souvenirs, beautiful white roses, such
as you rarely see, and all, almost without cultivation, perfume the air, with
woodbine and every variety of honeysuckle all out now. The weather is perfectly
delicious, neither too warm nor too cold, just right for a blanket or two at
night, a dashing gallop in the morning, a cool walk on the parade at eventide;
moonlight such as you never dreamed of, and oh, such sunsets! I used to think
they could get up a pretty fair performance of this kind at Mac-o-cheek, when I
was young and romantic, and before you were thought of, but a sunset on the
Mississippi is beyond compare; and to stand by the broad river side at night,
when its surface is glassy and still, and by the clear moonlight see the
reflection in the water, is worth several days' journey. This sunny South is
very sweet; its clime almost genial. No one can wonder they love it, and my
theory of the war now is just to go on and take it. I approve of colonizing as
we go, open the crevasse and let the Northern hordes flood through, and like
the waters of the great river spread over the plain not to return again to the
parent rills, but to fertilize and fructify the earth.
I have been quiescent and still for eight or ten days, a good
while for me, and am disciplining and drilling my soldiers in a beautiful and
most convenient camp. Upon so spacious a plain I can pitch the tents of my
whole brigade in the rear of a continuous color line, when all the regiments
are out on dress parade. I assure you it is a pleasant sight these pleasant
evenings. In the intervals of drill, the men play ball, the whole plain is
carefully polished and smooth as a floor. How long we shall enjoy our pleasant
rest nobody knows. I suppose we must look out for the gallinippers next month.
We had already one or two little tastes of their quality.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 285-8
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