On Board Flag Ship “Fairy,”
Up Tennessee River On The Alabama Side, Three
Miles Above Eastport, January 6, 1865.
My Dear Wife:
My heading will show you my position, that you can the
better learn from the map. I am now, in point of fact, within the Alabama
lines. I reported the day before yesterday to Major-Gen. A. J. Smith, at
Clifton, Tennessee, in person, and immediately received the following order:
Special Orders
No. 3.
Extract II.
Brig.-Gen. Thomas Kilby Smith, U. S.
V., having reported at these headquarters for duty, is hereby assigned to, and
will at once assume command of, the Third Division, Detachment Army of the
Tennessee.
Col. J. B. Moore, now commanding the
Third Division, is hereby relieved from such command, and will report to
Brig.-Gen. T. K. Smith for assignment.
In relieving Colonel Moore, the
Major-General commanding desires to express his high appreciation of the able,
thorough, and soldierly manner with which he has executed the trust confided to
him in the command.
By order of Major-Gen. A. J. Smith,
J. Hough, Asst. Adjt.-Gen.
I have transcribed the order in full because it contains a
well-deserved compliment to a soldier of my own making, and who received all
his training from me, and who has done full justice to his preceptor in the
important responsibilities thrust upon him in my absence. I have not yet
assumed command, because I am reconnoitring the river with Gen. A. J. Smith,
upon Admiral Lee's ship, with a view to position and the debarkation of our
troops. Admiral Lee, who is in command of the Mississippi Squadron, has been
immensely polite to me, and has made me quite at home with him. All my
officers, and those at General Smith's headquarters, have expressed much joy at
my return, which I assure you is mutual; on my part I am gratified beyond
expression in being once more restored to my command and associated with my
comrades in arms. I write under some difficulty, for the boat is shaking
excessively, and I can hardly keep my pen to the paper, but as a despatch boat
will be sent down this evening, I avail myself of the opportunity, as I do of
each that presents itself, to advise you of my movements and physical
condition. My health is tolerably good; I am not as well as when on the
Cumberland, and from two causes — the weather is murky and the Tennessee water
unwholesome, added to which my food has not for two or three days been as good
as usual, and I suffer from the confined air of the boats. Heretofore I have
had the boat exclusively to myself, but since arriving at Clifton, there has
been a necessity for transportation of troops and the boats are all crowded
with soldiers. However, I am every way better than I expected to be at this time,
and certainly have no right to complain. Joe and the horses are in good care,
and when we get to some place I will write you a long letter.
Since writing the above, our boat has stopped at Eastport,
and I have been ashore on horseback with General Smith, reconnoitring the
country, and such a desolate, cursed, God-forgotten, man-forsaken, vile,
wretched place I have never yet seen in all my campaigning. If I shall have to
stay here long, I shall well-nigh go crazy. We hear Hood is moving south; his
pickets disappeared from this place night before last, and there is what has
been for them a strong fortification. There are but two or three families left,
and they in the last stages of destitution; whenever you offer a prayer,
petition that you or yours may never be in the war-path. You read of horrors of
war, but you can form no conception of those horrors until you are an
eyewitness of its results upon the inhabitants of the country where it has
raged, where they have been, as they usually are, the prey of both contending
parties. I shall probably go down the river as far as Clifton, where my own
command is, to-morrow, to be governed by circumstances that may transpire after
my arrival. As the case now stands, in all probability, I shall go into winter
quarters somewhere hereabouts, and General Thomas's orders are “Eastport.” My
third winter in the South does not promise more comfort than the two that have
preceded it. Four winters ago it was Camp Dennison and Paducah, the next
Young's Point, before Vicksburg, in the swamps, the next between the Black and
Yazoo Rivers, the worst country, save this, I ever saw, and this winter, here,
up the Tennessee. I think I have had my share of the dark side of the war, but
my motto is, a stiff upper lip, and never say die. If health, the great
desideratum, is spared, the rest will come. General Garrard, one of Mrs.
McLean's sons, is here. His head is as bald as an egg, and he looks to be a
thousand years old. War adds age fast.
You must address your letters to me as General commanding Third
Division Detachment Army of the Tennessee, via Cairo. I suppose I shall
stand a chance of getting them sometime within a month or less.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 375-7
