Sunday, July 6, 2014

Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to Elizabeth Budd Smith, June 15, 1863


On Board Steamer "armenia,"
Yazoo River, Near Haines's Bluff, June 15, 1863.

My Dear Wife:

I have just returned from the completion of my labors upon a Court of Inquiry at Milliken's Bend. While there I witnessed and had to take some part in a very bloody fight, in which three negro regiments repulsed a largely superior force of the enemy. The conflict was desperate, hand to hand, the blacks proving incontestably that they are brave. I suppose some account of the affair will get into the newspapers.

The siege of Vicksburg progresses without material change within the past few days. The bombardment is incessant; always we hear the booming of heavy guns, not seldom the sharp rattle of musketry; our approaches are constant; she must fall, perhaps in a week, perhaps not for months. Heavy reinforcements from above have reached us; more are coming.

SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 304-5

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