HEADQUARTERS 54TH REGT.
O. V. INF.,
CAMP ON HERNANDO ROAD,
NEAR MEMPHIS,
Sept. 23, 1862.
MY DEAR MOTHER:
This anniversary1 will be remembered by you and
me, probably the most interested parties to the transaction it commemorates. As
the matter is unimportant to all the world and the rest of mankind, perhaps at
this late day the less we say about it the better. I know you are thinking of
me, wherever you are, or whatever you may be doing at this very moment, and by
the present writing you will be assured of being in my thoughts.
There are one or two facts in my history connected with the
month of September. All the important changes that have transpired to me date
in that month, and on the 23d I am never at home. I have no recollection of
passing that day with my family for very many years, back even to my childhood,
always travelling like the Wandering Jew.
It is a good while since I have heard from you or from wife.
I suppose mail communication is in a great way suspended. I write letters with
some anxiety. From the publication in the Commercial of 19th inst., I
imagine wife was in Cincinnati at that time. I shall expect soon to hear of
your being with her. The fate of that city is not yet decided. I think it rests
with Buell. If Bragg outgenerals him, Cincinnati will be burned. We have
exaggerated rumors of McClellan's success; I cannot yet believe them. Halleck
has massed his forces and hurled them upon Lee's army in retreat. Massing
forces is Halleck's forte. I do not see now the annihilation of the enemy's
Army of the Potomac. That will have a strange effect upon this war. Then we
shall begin to change front. I expect stirring times here in two or three
weeks, not sooner. My pickets had a little brush with guerillas last night. Guerillas
are utterly contemptible; they possess neither honor nor courage. Save in light
affairs of this character and one expedition into Mississippi, some account of
which I gave in a recent letter to dear Helen, my time has been actively
occupied during my sojourn here in perfecting the drill of my regiment and
fitting it for active service in the field.
Memphis, as I have remarked in former letters, has been a
very opulent city. The centre of a vast system of railways, favorably situated
upon the banks of the Mississippi, with a splendid landing; a great mart for
cotton, the staple of a widespread and most fertile bottom in Arkansas,
Mississippi, and Tennessee, by which it is immediately surrounded; wealth in
actual cash, gold, and bullion from European factors has flowed in upon its
inhabitants with continuous tide and now is evidenced by luxury and taste in
the building, furnishing, and adorning of their residences and public
buildings. The people I have met are sufficiently well educated and refined.
All of course are intensely Southern. There are to-day, perhaps, six hundred
Union people in Memphis to six thousand secessionists dyed in the wool. Its
climate is delightful and the country about is remarkable for its adaptability
to the cultivation of fruits and flowers. It is historical; from here De Soto
saw for the first time the wide and turbid stream of the Father of Waters. Thus
far through swamp and wilderness he had forced his weary way in search of gold
and precious stones. Fort Pickering, now manned and armed for offence and
defence, was the site of his first camp. Immortalized by our Western artist
Powell in his painting which fills the last panel that was vacant in the
rotunda of the Capitol, its name will perhaps go down to posterity as the scene
of bloody conflict during the civil war. Our history now is red in blood, and
scarlet dyed are the sins of the nation. I have just been reading Governor
Ramsey's proclamation and message to the legislature of Minnesota. The
Northwestern Indians are up in arms to renew the massacres that chilled us with
horror in the annals of the early pioneers. Again is the reeking scalp torn
from the living victim's head. Again is the unborn child torn quivering from
its mother's womb and cast quivering upon her pulseless heart; again is the
torch applied to the settler's cabin, the forts and blockhouse besieged by the
ruthless savage, the tomahawk and rifle ever busied in their murderous work.
Many hundreds of men, children, and women are known to have been butchered in a
manner too sickening and revolting to write about, and the homes of thirty thousand
made desolate.
Distracted by civil war in which no issue is fairly made,
harassed by the savage tribes in the front and rear, England only waiting for a
salient point — the Republic totters. What and when will be the end?
I did myself the pleasure of copying for Helen's benefit
some lines of wife, which you have doubtless received and read ere this. They
are the reflex of her pure mind — chaste, sweet in expression, and the surcharge
of her agonized spirit. “Waiting, watching, and weeping, her heart's blood is
running to tears.” God bless her and you; verily the evil days are upon us. “When
the brother delivers up the brother to death, and the father the child; and the
children rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death.'”
We hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . It is woe unto
them that are with child, and to them that give suck in these days. My poor
wife! how often I think of these prophecies as I reflect upon her condition,
charged with the sole care of those five helpless children. God help and
sustain her in this hour of trial. You can now better understand, and perhaps
better than ever before, why I wanted my family, all I have on earth, to love
to be together to mutually sustain each other. No property in times like these,
however vested, is safe. I could tell you of heartrending instances of
deprivation of property and its consequences here at the South. We are passing
through a great revolution, truly; “the end is not yet.”
As servants of the government, we do not know where next we
may be called to perform service. My impression is that our corps will be
retained in the valley of the Mississippi and do battle to keep open its
navigation. We shall probably take Vicksburg and garrison the principal towns
on the Mississippi to the Gulf and up the Red River. The events of the next few
weeks will determine. I do not expect to be inactive long. I hope not. My
horses are waxing fat and neigh impatiently in their stalls. I prefer the field
to the camp.
_______________
1 His forty-second birthday.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 239-42
