Headquarters Second Brigade,
First Div., Seventeenth Army Corps,
Natchez, Oct. 7, 1863.
My
Dear Mother:
I knew you would
write me on the 23d; felt that even as I was writing you on the selfsame day,
perhaps at the same hour, our spirits were in commune. What is there in all
this world so sweet, so pure, so holy as a mother's love? Darling mother, I
love you with all my heart and all my mind, and all my strength, but my love
for you is nothing in comparison with yours for me that has continued so
constant, so unwavering, for all these years, these long, long years which yet
are nothing to look back upon.
It is true as you
remark, I have travelled much, very much in the past season — have traversed
many, many miles by land and water; ten times up and down the river when the
banks were infested by guerrillas, never shot into once, other boats preceding
and succeeding me constantly attacked. I seem to have borne nearly a charmed
life. God has been very good to me. I see by the papers, as well as by your
letter, that Bill Lytle has gone under at last; poor fellow, his was a gallant
spirit, and he has gone where the good soldiers go. The best death to die — “We
tell his doom without a sigh, for he is freedom’s now and fame’s.”
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 339
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