Corinth Mississippi

Tuesday night, Oct 7^th, 1862

My Dear Wife:-

Yours of the 27^th ultimo was received yesterday, but I could not write to you then because we was on duty.  My last letter to you was from Burnsville October 1^st.  Since then what has been done here? Oh! My God.

Before this reaches you, you will hear of a dreadful battle being fought here.  I shall not attempt to give you much of the particulars of the battle.  You are more interested in the movements of our Company than more important matters.  I will begin at Burnsville.  Friday morning at two o’clock we was ordered to prepare for an immediate march and by daylight all we laced of being ready was the order to fall in.  Between daylight and sunrise, we heard cannonading in the direction of Corinth.  About 7 o’clock we fell in and marched to the depot.  The 12^th Illinois started for Corinth.  We remained in line till noon, the cannonading continuing almost all the time.  At noon the telegraph operator said all was ready for us to move and took up his instrument and we marched to Glendale, five miles east of Corinth.  Here we stopped and he set his battery at work and told us that dreadful fighting had kept on till night.  The cars came here and Albert got on them and went to Corinth.  About midnight we was again ordered to march and came to a water tan within a mile and half of town where we put up for the night!  Just before daylight I was suddenly brought to a sense of my existence by hearing the discharge of volleys of musketry soon followed by the deafening roar of artillery.  We was on some high ground where we could see the flash of the guns and follow the course of the shell by its fiery path, it being yet dark; the cannonading kept quite steady till about nine o’clock, when the musketry began and such a continuous roar of fire arms I have never heard.  Then the artillery redoubled its fury and we could hardly distinguish one gun from the whole roar of artillery.  It continued till about noon, when the cheer of Victory went up from many thousand troops, fighting for the Stars and Stripes.  The firing now became slow and only from our side.  Price was again retreating.  His men fought with desperation.  Some of them being killed even inside of our breast works.  Our army followed him and continued to drive Prices army before them.

There is no use for me to try to give you an estimate of the killed and wounded.  I rode over part of the battlefield and saw hundreds, both friend and foe, stretched cold on the ground.  The loss will reach thousands on both sides.  I will refrain from any comment in regard to the looks of the dead or the sufferings of the wounded.  It would be a sorrowful tale to tell.

We have a great many prisoners.  They will be paroled.  Among the Regiments engaged was the 26^th Illinois.  I was on the ground where it fought and made a bayonet charge.  It suffered severely, but I heard or saw nothing of Eli W. Jones.  John Gaut was taken to our hospital, having fell from sun stroke.  He is now well and has joined his Regiment.  Albert is quite sick with jaundice.  John Bell has returned to duty.  My health is tolerably good.  I am better than I was a few days ago.

Now as to the new Proclamation of the President, I see nothing wrong in it.  If the people of the Southern states continue in rebellion, there is no one would pretend to say but that they ought to be shot.  Is their property better than their own lives.  The President only says he will liberate only the slaves in the states then in rebellion.  Not all the slaves of the United States.  Any state that sends representatives to the next Congress will not be included in the disloyal list, even if there is some fighting going on in her borders, and even if she has thousands of such quasi Union men as the one you spoke of, that has called out this paragraph.  It is perhaps as well that his repentance is slow.  It can the better be depended on.  You can tell all such that I do not consider myself a savior.  If I should die, it will not save the life of a single Negroe.  Neither will my living be the cause of the death of even one.  That is not what the war is for.  Have you any neighbors that thin that if they join the army, it will be to kill Negroes.  Do they think if they came, it would be to get killed that the Negroe might live.  If so, God pity them for their ignorance.  I do believe that if any of that justice is meted out in this world, a curse will be upon them.

I will now close with a promise to continue to write often.  I have a book that I will send you soon.  It is an argument for slavery, published by the Methodist Episcopal church, south.  When you receive it you will read it carefully and then send me your opinion of it.  I could send you a good blanket or two by express.  Do you want them or not.

Here they are, The Chicago Times of yesterday with all accounts of the Corinth fight.  You never buy a paper at 10 o’clock at night and quit writing a letter to read the news, do you.  Well I will say,

Good bye.

W. A. Smith