CAMP NEAR MEMPHIS, July
28, 1862.
MY DEAR MOTHER:
I wonder sometimes that I do not lose myself in the frequent
flittings I have made; as to the properties, the belongings, they are narrowed
down to the smallest possible compass. My little leather travelling trunk is my
bed, board, lodging, library, and secretary. Its key long disappeared; and as
it is strapped up, I bid an affectionate adieu to all its contents, in the firm
belief that I shall never see them again.
Soldiers are great thieves on principle; when they can't
steal from the enemy, they circumvent each other to keep in practice, taking
that which, “not enriching them,” causes, in its loss, their comrades to swear
worse than “our army in Flanders.” One by one my shirts, drawers, socks,
gloves, boots, handkerchiefs, books have disappeared. The last theft committed
upon me was amusing from its boldness. We were encamped on the edge of an
immense cotton field near a grove before “Holly Springs,” on our second march
there, when we shelled the city. It was terribly hot; I was longing for
something to read, when Stephen most opportunely produced from his bag a most
excellent copy of Byron, that I had taken from Bragg's quarters at Corinth. I
had entirely forgotten the book, which the boy had boned for his own use, and
was overjoyed to get hold of anything to relieve ennui and the deadly tedium of
waiting orders with the thermometer at an hundred and upwards, so I seized “My
Lord,” and forthwith repaired to a log in the shade; but just as I was
composing myself to read, a chattering above made me look up to see a fox
squirrel and a jay bird fight. I drew my pistol, aimed at the squirrel, and in
that brief moment the book was spirited away by some lurking vagabond who
probably sold it for a glass of grog. For three long summer days I cursed that
thief. Last night our regimental surgeon hung his trousers on the fence before
his tent; they vanished just as he turned his back, and being his sole
remaining pair, left him disconsolate. I can tell you many an amusing instance
of just such purloinings as vexatious as they are ludicrous.
Still, barring attack sometimes talked of, it being a new
base of operations, I think we shall hardly begin a fall campaign before the
last of September or the first of October. I also acknowledged receipt of your
most affectionate letter of the 4th inst., found here with quite a budget of
mail. You say you look only for Halleck’s army. Events multiplying and succeed
with lightning-like rapidity. Since the date of your letter Halleck has been given
in charge of all the armies of the Union, et nous verrons.
The result of this struggle no human mind can foretell; the
farther I penetrate the bowels of this Southern land, the more fully I am
convinced that its inhabitants are a people not to be whipped. The unanimity of
feeling among them is wonderful. The able-bodied men are all in the army. We
find none en route but the old, the feeble, the sick, the women. These
last dauntless to the last. Those the army have left behind have learned that
there is nothing for them to fear from us. We shower gold and benefits which
they accept with a greed and rapacity . . .
Children are reared to curse us. The most strange and absurd
stories are told of us, and stranger still, they are believed. I have been
gazed at as if I were a wild beast in a menagerie. The slaves thought we were
black. We are scorned, though feared, hated, maligned. Seventeen hundred people
have left Memphis within three days rather than take the oath of allegiance.
Leaving, they have sacrificed estate, wealth, luxury, and the majority of them
have gone into the Confederate army. There is scarce a lady in the city; the
few who are left, our open and avowed enemies. We shall always whip them in the
open field, we may cut them off in detail; we shall never by whipping them
restore the Union. If some miraculous interposition of Divine Providence does
not put an end to the unnatural strife, we shall fight as long as there is a
Southerner left to draw a sword. Europe is powerless to intervene. England may
take sides, but she can't grow cotton in the face of a Federal army. France,
who is now equipping her navies, who by similarity of language and habit has
close affiliations with Louisiana, who is eagerly stretching out her hand for
colonies, and to whose arms the Southern Mississippi planters would eagerly
look for protection — France must beware; Russia is no uninterested spectator.
The first step towards intervention is the match to kindle the blaze of war all
over Europe. The South would gladly colonize; it is her only hope for
redemption. Congress has forced a new issue. Slavery is doomed. New levies must
be forced. Three hundred thousand men from the North will not obey the
President's call and volunteer. Drafting on the one side and conscription on
the other. The result is plain — a military dictatorship, then consolidation.
The days of the Republic are numbered. But a little while and the strong right
arm is the only protection to property, the value of property existing only in
name.
These thoughts are gloomy, but I must confess there is but
little to encourage one who perils his life for his country's honor.
You flatter me when you say my letters are interesting to
you. Save to you, or to wife, I am inclined to think there would be found in
these letters little worth perusal. They have almost invariably been written
while upon the march, in bivouac, often behind intrenchments, right in front of
the enemy, and only to reassure you of my continued safety. I continually
regret that the pen of the ready writer has not been given me, with industry
commensurate. I might then have made pencillings by the wayside, through the
wilderness and the camp, worth more than passing notice. For four long months
my life has been rife in incident; the circumstance that would have made an era
to date from in times that are past, being so rapidly followed by one of more
startling nature, as to drive it from the memory, and so the drama of life has
gone on, the thrill of excitement a daily sensation.
I had become somewhat familiarized with camp life and its
surroundings before I undertook to recruit my own regiment at Camp Dennison.
The fall and winter passed away quietly enough in barracks, though it was no
light task with me, to recruit, organize, and drill a regiment of new levies.
Suddenly and before spring was opened, marching orders came
and we found ourselves hurried into the field, without arms or adequate camp
equipage. The first issue of arms I had condemned as unreliable and returned to
the State arsenal. Within a week of our arrival at Paducah a detachment from my
regiment with borrowed arms had taken possession of Columbus. There our colors
waved for the first time over an enemy's fortification, and I may say, par
parenthese, this of these colors, that their history is rather peculiar.
The regiment never had its regimental colors; the flag we carry was presented
by a Masonic lodge of Cleveland to a company I recruited in that city. It
floats over me as I write, and I thank God is unstained by dishonor. It waved
at Columbus, at Chickasaw Bluff; at Shiloh its guard of four men were all
killed, its bearer crushed and killed by the falling of a tree-top, cut off by
solid shot. The staff was broken and the flag tangled in the branches; there I
dismounted for the first and only time during that day to rescue the old flag,
which I took under a sheet of flame. I rode upon it the rest of that day, slept
upon it at night, and on Monday flaunted it in the face of the Crescent City
Guards. The old flag floated at Russell's house. We were in reserve in that
battle, but under fire. It was foremost in all the advances upon Corinth, and
the first planted inside the intrenchments. Since the evacuation of Corinth, on
detached service, it has been unfurled at all the important points; at
Lagrange, at Holly Springs, at Moscow, at Ammon's Bridge, at Lafayette, at
Germantown, at White's Station, and now at Memphis. But, to return, we received
our arms at Paducah, and were terribly exposed while encamped there. From
thence we were transported on steamboats to Chickasaw Bluffs on the celebrated
Tennessee expedition. For nine days we were crowded close on small steamboats,
and the first day we disembarked were compelled to wade streams breast high,
the weather terribly cold. We were driven back by high water. We again embarked
and landed at Pittsburg Landing. There my men began to feel the effects of the
terrible exposure to which they had been subjected. But no time was allowed to
recuperate, constant and severe marches by night and by day kept the army on
the qui vive. I can assure you there was no surprise at Shiloh. I made a
tremendous night march only the Thursday before, of which I have heretofore
given you some account; was ordered upon a march that very Sunday morning, and
was setting picket guard till twelve o'clock of Saturday night. Well, then came
the great battle and the burying of the dead, and here I will refer you to an
autograph order of General Sherman which I enclose; he will doubtless be a
great man in time to come, and it will be worth while to preserve as a memorial
of the times. . . . After the burial of the dead and a brief breathing spell in
a charnel-house, we were ordered forward; then came more skirmishing, then the
advance upon Corinth by regular parallels, the felling of enormous trees, to
form abattis, the ditch, the rampart, often thrown up by candle-light. Scouting,
picketing, advancing in force, winning ground inch by inch, bringing up the
heavy siege guns; at last the evacuation, the flight, the pursuit, then the
occupation of the country. Now my labors were not lessened, though my
responsibilities increased. I was often upon detached service, far away from
the main army, as at Ammon's Bridge, where I lay for ten days, and where I had
frequent skirmishes, taking many prisoners. There I made acquaintance with the
planters, and finally, when I left, destroyed the structure, by chopping it
away and by burning, bringing upon my head, doubtless, the anathemas of all the
country-side. There is a portion of Tennessee and Mississippi where they know
me, and where I think my memory will be green for some time to come. And now I
am at Memphis or rather in the suburbs, that I assure you are beautiful. The
shrubbery is splendidly luxurious, the most exquisite flowers, magnificent
houses and grounds and a splendid country about it. I do not wonder its people
have made boast of their sunny South; no more beautiful land is spread out to
the sun, but now devastation and ruin stares it in the face. I have met but few
of the people, those I have seen are sufficiently polite; but it is easy to see
we are not welcome guests, that the Union sentiment expressed, is expressed pro
hac vice. If I stay here long I will write you more about them. Thus you
have a brief synopsis of the history of my regiment in the field;
unfortunately, it has no historian in its ranks; all connected with it have
been satisfied with doing their duty, without recording their acts. Thus while
we see in every paper, officers and regiments lauded and praised, the most
insignificant performances magnified into glowing acts of heroism, the most
paltry skirmishes into great battles, we find ourselves unknown. I do not
regard courage in battle as a very extraordinary quality, but fortitude on the
march and in the trenches, in the endurance of the thousand vicissitudes that
attach to such a campaign as we have gone through, is above all praise. My men,
now sadly reduced in numbers — for dysentery, diarrhoea, camp fever, exposure,
to say nothing of wounds, have done their work — have shown this fortitude in a
superior degree. They have been a forlorn hope, have always led the van, have
never missed a march, a battle, or a skirmish, but their history will never be
written, the most of them will go to their graves unhonored and unsung. But I
am wearying you with too long a letter, written not under the most favorable
auspices. I enclose you a report from Sherman partly mutilated before I
received it.
SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of
Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 225-30
