Col. Thomas Kilby Smith to Mrs. Eliza Walter Smith, July 28, 1862

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

Colonel Thomas Kilby Smith to his sister Helen, April 14, 1862

HEADQUARTERS 54TH REG1MENT O. V. I.,

CAMP SHILOH, TENNESSEE, April 14, 1862.

MY DEAR SISTER:

Well, my dear Helen, the great fight has been fought; I have had my part in it, and, save a slight scratch not worth mentioning, have come out safe. The papers, of course, teem with accounts, which you have doubtless read until you are satisfied; but, at the risk of stale news, I will give you my experience of the battle, of which I believe I saw as much as “any other man.”

On the Thursday preceding, my command had been ordered upon a most fatiguing night march, which lay for six miles through a dense swamp to a point near a ford, where we lay for some hours in ambuscade for the purpose of taking a body of rebel cavalry. On Friday we marched back to camp. On Saturday, nearly the whole regiment was turned out on fatigue duty to build some bridges and a road to cross artillery, and on Saturday night I was ordered to hold my command in readiness for an expedition to march as early as eight o'clock on Sunday. All this service was intensely fatiguing to the officers and harassing to the men, but to the last order I probably owe my life, for, having been prompt in its execution and my horse being saddled, no sooner had the long roll sounded, than my men were in line. The attack was very sudden, and within three minutes our tents were literally riddled with the balls of the enemy's skirmishers. We marched the battalion to a kind of peninsula formed by a dense ravine on the one side and a creek on the other, and there formed the line of battle.

From the fatigue duty I have spoken of, and certain camp epidemics prevalent, our forces had been very much weakened, and we took into the field but about fifteen hundred men. To this force were opposed eight thousand of the enemy's infantry, supported by artillery and cavalry. Now, to the better understanding of my account, you must recollect what I have before written you, that the Second Brigade of Sherman's Division occupied the extreme left wing of the army, whose front lines extended many miles; that my regiment occupied the extreme left of the brigade, and observe that the enemy having surprised the centre which was broken, and having routed and captured the greater part of Prentiss’ command, to whom we looked for support, stole down our front and attempted to outflank us, and now at about nine o'clock on Sunday morning we joined battle. Having seen by my glass the vastly superior force of the enemy, I determined to sell our lives as dearly as possible, but never to surrender, and ordered my Zouaves to lie on their bellies, and, waiting the attack, not to fire until the foe was within twenty yards. We were ranged along the brow of the hill, slightly covered with a small growth of timber, and between us and the advancing ranks was an open plain. On they came, steadily, and save the tread of the well-trained soldiers, led by General Hardee in person, not a sound was heard; at last they were upon us, and then commenced the deafening roar of volley after volley; for four hours and a half the deadly hand-to-hand conflict raged. (I took 390 enlisted men into battle, I left 187 upon the field, killed or badly wounded, but from me they took no prisoners. The 71st Ohio . . . abandoned us early in the action, but the 55th Illinois were staunch. The brigade lost 587 killed and wounded, but most of these are from the 54th Ohio and 55th Illinois). At last our ammunition began to fail, and I never shall forget the despairing looks of some of the boys, who would come clustering around my horse and say, “Colonel, what shall I do; my cartridges are all out?” But, fortunately, the enemy's fire began to slack. My men all fired low, every man made his mark, and though our own men could hardly get round among their own killed and wounded, the field was strewn thick with the dead of the foe. By this time I was in command of the brigade, Colonel Stuart having been wounded and compelled to retire. I fell back in good order for better position and until I could be reinforced with ammunition; my forty rounds were all gone. At last an orderly from General Grant came up to promise the required supply and to order us to a position at which we could cover a battery. I forgot to tell you that the enemy had planted a battery upon a height, commanding our first position, and were shelling us all the while the first fight was going on. One of my horses was struck once by a piece of shell and twice by rifle balls. No sooner had we taken position by the batteries than the attack was renewed with greater vigor than ever; but now the heavy guns from the gunboats in our rear began to throw their shells clean over us and into the ranks of the enemy; never was sweeter music to my ears than their thunder; the shades of night drew on, the enemy began to slacken fire, and, as shell after shell dropped and burst in their midst, gradually retired. Our men dropped exhausted on their arms; all day the battle had raged, all day they had suffered privation of food and drink, and now began to fall a copious shower of rain, which lasted steadily till morning; through that shower without a murmur they slept, and the next morning at seven o'clock I, having been formally placed in command of the brigade by order of General Sherman, began the march towards the right wing, where we were to take position. General Nelson, who with General Buell had brought up reinforcements during the night, had commenced manoeuvres at daybreak. As early as eight o'clock my brigade was in the line of battle and under a heavy fire of shell. At about nine o'clock we were ordered into action, which was hotly contested all the day long. About four o'clock I was ordered to the command of another brigade, or, more properly, a concentration of skeleton regiments, which I had got into line, and, leaving my own command with Lieutenant-Colonel Malmborg, carried my new command far into an advanced position, then returning, brought up my own brigade upon the left of Shiloh Chapel. Now the Pelican flag began to waver and droop. All the day long we, that is, my immediate command, were opposed to the “Crescent City Guards,” the pet regiment of Beauregard, to whom in the morning he had made his whole army present arms, and whose flag he had at the same time planted, saying of us, the Northern army, “Thus far, but no farther shalt thou go”; vain boast; at even tide, like a gull upon the crest of the wave in the far-off ocean, it fluttered and went down.

I drew my forces up in good order under the eye of General Sherman, and Monday night again under a most drenching shower, which lasted all the night through, the men even now without food or drink lay upon their arms, and on Tuesday morning were again in line; the enemy had gone, but not their occupation; all day they stood guard upon the outposts, and the next day we marched the whole regiment onward for three miles and a half to bring in the wounded of the enemy. That day I took thirty-two prisoners, and brought in the bodies of an Arkansas colonel and Major Monroe, of Kentucky, the latter one of the most distinguished men of the State, and both of them I had decently interred. Oh, Helen, if you had seen the horrors of that battle, as I saw them when the rage of battle had passed, the heaps of slain, the ghastly wounds, had you heard the groans of the dying, had you seen the contortions of men and horses; but why dwell on the theme which abler writers will so vividly portray? I have given you one hasty sketch of the humble part it was my good fortune to be able to play in one of the greatest dramas of the age. Thank God for me, for in His infinite mercy He alone has preserved me in the shock of battle; pray for me always. One more conflict, and I leave a memory for my children or make a name for myself. My flag is still unstained, my honor still bright.

SOURCE: Walter George Smith, Life and letters of Thomas Kilby Smith, p. 195-8