Headquarters First Brigade,
Fourth Div., Seventeenth Army Corps,
Department Of The Tennessee,
In The Field, January 18, 1864.
My Dear Mother:
Here I find myself isolé, and until further orders must so remain. The government of the army is
strictly monarchical, almost a pure despotism. An eminent English jurist
asserts that there is no such thing as martial law, or in other words, that
martial law may be defined to be the will of the general in command. A true
soldier, the instant he enlists or accepts a commission, surrenders all freedom
of action, almost all freedom of thought. Every personal feeling is superseded
by the interests of the cause to which he devotes himself. He goes wherever
ordered, he performs whatever he is commanded, he suffers whatever he is
enjoined ; he becomes a mere passive instrument for the most part incapable of
resistance. The graduation of ranks is only a graduation in slavery. I desire
to become a good and practical soldier and strategist, one whose labor and
conduct no enemy will ever laugh at in battle, no friend ever find
insufficient, as such, to serve my country so long as she may need my services
or until they cease to be valuable.
As for this country
I am in, I feel perfectly incapable of conveying an adequate idea of the dreary
lonely nakedness that surrounds me. The curse of Babylon has fallen upon it. It
is “a desolation, a dry land and a wilderness." I have in former letters
adverted to the peculiar geological formation of the chain of bluffs upon a
portion of which I am now encamped. The chain is about three hundred miles in
length, always on the east side of the Mississippi, and as some geologist
asserts has been blown up, formed like snowdrifts by the action of the wind in
former ages. Be this as it may, the face of the country upon them has very much
the appearance of a succession of snow-drifts upon which a sudden thaw has
begun to act. The top soil has no tenacity, although fertile, and when broken
for cultivation, yields like sugar or salt to the action of the elements. The
country is not undulating but broken in precipitous hills; deep ravines,
gorges, and defiles mark the ways. Upon the hillsides not too steep for the
passage of the plough, where have been the old cotton-fields, the land lies in
hillocks, resembling newly-made graves. And as the area upon which the great
staple could be produced is extensive, one may ride for many miles over what,
with little stretch of imagination, may be considered an immense graveyard. To
add to the gloom and desolation, are the charred remains of burned dwellings,
cotton sheds and cotton-gin houses, gardens and peach orchards laid open and
waste, negro quarters unroofed, long lines of earthworks and fortifications,
trenches and rifle-pits, traversing roadways, cutting in their passage hamlet
or dwelling, plantation and wilderness. Huge flocks of buzzards, ravens and
carrion crows, continually wheel, circle, and hover over the war-worn land. The
bleaching bones of many a mule and horse show where they have held high
carnival, and for them much dainty picking still remains, as the spring rains
wash off the scanty covering of the soldiers who have gone to rest along the
banks of the Yazoo. The patriot veteran who packs an '' Enfield " is as a
general rule superficially buried in his blanket, if he falls in battle, on the
spot where he falls, unless, wounded, he crawls to a sheltered nook to find a
grave — happy, then, if he's buried at all. Many a corpse I've seen swelled up
and black, with its eyes picked out, which, while it was a man, had dragged
itself for shelter and out of sight, and been overlooked by the burial
fatigues. This, as father used to say, is a digression. Off from the cultivated
lands are canebrakes, dense jungles of fishing poles of all sizes. The little
reed of which they make pipe stems that grows as thick on the ground as wheat
stalks in a field, and the great pole thirty feet high and as thick as your
wrist. Occasional forests, and there some of the trees are majestic and
beautiful; not a few of them evergreen, one, the name of which I cannot get,
with a bright green spiked leaf bearing a beautiful bright red berry, grows
large and branching and shows finely. The magnolia is evergreen. I send
specimens of both in the box, though I fear they will wither before they will
reach you; also some of the moss that attaches itself to every tree that grows,
and some that don't, or rather, has done growing and are dead. Through this country
I have penetrated in all directions where there are roadways and where there
are none, and sometimes have had a high old time in finding my way. The better
portion of the inhabitants have abandoned — some refugees at the North, some in
the rebel army, some fled to Georgia and Alabama, the few that remain are the
poorest sort of white trash. This element, as a general rule, is Union in
sentiment. They possess strange characteristics common to the class wherever I
have met them in Tennessee, Arkansas, or Mississippi, but not in Louisiana.
They are ignorant, and rather dirty, I mean uncleanly, in their habits, always
miserably poor and miserably clad, and yet, the women especially, possessed of
a certain unaccountable refinement and gentleness almost approaching gentility.
The children are pretty, even with the unkempt head and grimy features. Men and
women always have delicate hands and feet, the high instep and Arab arch is the
general rule. There 's blood somewhere run to seed. There is great suffering
among the people of all classes, and the end is not yet. I enclose you one or
two intercepted letters.
In the jungles and
canebreaks and the thickets of the forest there are many cattle and hogs
running wild; some are Texas cattle that have escaped from the droves of the
rebels while they were in occupation; some have escaped from our own droves;
some have belonged to the planters, and have been run off to prevent their
falling into the hands of either party, and so long have they been neglected
that at last they have become wild, almost like buffalo, or elk, and run like
the devil at the sight of man on foot or horseback. These animals we sometimes
circumvent, and I make up expeditions for that purpose, taking out
wagon-trains, shooting and butchering the beef and pork, and hauling it in
dead. The wildness of the animals gives these forays the excitement of grand
battles and hunts. The meat is excellent, and my mess table since I have been
here well supplied. Thrice since I have been here I have journeyed to headquarters
at Vicksburg, and twice have been visited by the general commanding, McPherson;
with these intervals, I have been without companionship. In the evenings I sit
quite alone, except I have a terrier puppy I brought with me from Natchez, who
seems disposed to become social. Last winter at Young's Point, and indeed ever
since I have been in the field till now, I have been most fortunate in social
commune. General Sherman has been a host to me, and while he was within ten
miles I was never at a loss for somebody to talk to. General Stuart was a very
fascinating man, and I have never been very far away from General Grant and
staff. But now I am quite alone, and for two months have hardly heard the sound
of a woman's voice. My horses are a great comfort to me, and, thank God, are
all well; I am much blessed in horseflesh. Captain is gay as a lark; no better
little horse ever trod on iron. He's as game to-day as a little peacock. My
other horses you never saw. They are superb and sublime. Bell is confessedly
the finest horse in the army, East or West. J. L. is well and growing. He
starts to-morrow morning at three o'clock upon an expedition to the Yazoo River
to give battle to some wild ducks. I have no faith in the expedition.
My command of
infantry will all re-enlist as veterans; the major part of my cavalry. General
Sherman, I learn to-day by telegraph from Vicksburg, was there for a short
time. I did not see him. I have a telegraph office and operator for my own use,
and am in communication with Vicksburg and the other headquarters over a
considerable extent of country. I can tell you nothing further that I think
would interest you concerning my inner life here, so far away for the time
being, and for certain purposes I am an independent chieftain leading a wild
enough life. “No one to love, none to caress.”
SOURCE: Walter
George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 350-4
