On Board the Choctaw between Hickman and Columbus, Kentucky Mississippi River

Friday night, April 18^th, 1862

My Dear Wife:-

I expected a letter from you today but we have been on the move all day and al letter could hardly find us.  My last to you was last Saturday night.  Sunday morning we was ordered to saddle up and march to the boat landing to be ready to go down the river.  Sunday and Monday there was a great many troops went down the river.  We laid on the bank till yesterday morning, when we was ordered on board the boat to go down the river.  We went down as far as Riddles Point below Point Pleasant and was ordered back.  The whole country clear down to Fort Pillow is covered with water so that there is not much chance for military operations above there.  Opposite Hickman, I saw at two different houses, women waving neat little flags.  I wish every woman in the United States had one and would make use of it.  I don’t feel like writing tonight, you will therefore excuse me.  I send you ten dollars for your own use.  You can use some of it to buy Rollin a willow wagon if you like to.  There is $25. due to Pap on the horse he let Jack Foster have. I told John Foster to give him twenty five or thirty dollars.  I hope that you have received the box of overcoats that we sent.  You will send Mrs. Clow word and let her have both Allen and John Clow’s.  They will pay me the expenses.  One that is marked R.F.Y. in the sleeve belongs to Corporal Young.  You will keep it till they send for it or I will tell you where to send it some other time.  We left him and Corporal Hamilton lying side by side in the hospital at New Madrid, as well as Eldridge Jones and two others of our Company.

Saturday morning

We landed at Cairo a little after daylight.  Birds Point is entirely under water.  Just after the gun at the fort fired to hail us, a snag struck one of the barges that was towed by the Woodford, which was loaded with horses, and it would have soon sank but they run it aground at the fort.  I was standing on the upper deck and saw it.  It was an ugly sight to see a log run right up through the front end and a barge even.  It would seem worse for a steamboat.  I don’t know how long we will stop here but I suppose only long enough to take on coal.

You will direct your letters here, as we will go up the river.  The weather is rather wet and disagreeable.  I send you the Southern account of our first visit to New Madrid, of which I have already wrote to you.  I wrote to you two weeks ago tomorrow and enclosed some of your letters, but have got no answer.  Did you get it.  I received a letter from Dr. Beach a few days ago and he told me that one of our children had the mumps.  He did not say which it was.  I am anxious to hear from you.  I hope it is well by this time.  I have not had it yet.  I suppose there was not enough to go around or I would have had it.  I hope you may escape as well as I have.  The mumps have been quite hard on Eldridge Jones.  You have never told me whether you received those crackers that I sent by Dave and how you would like to live on them.

Some of the boys are now eating breakfast to the tune of fifty cents a meal, others are taking their mornings dram at ten cents a drink, and a great many are cursing the guards because they will not let them go ashore.  Some are still in the land of dreams.  I think the water is twenty feet higher in the river than the streets of Cairo, but it is nearly all covered with water.  It looks like two feet more of water would go clear over the tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad, then the whole place would be destroyed.

We are lying about a mile above the St. Charles hotel, but when we get coal we will drop down to town.  I will then go to the express office and send this to my wife.

William A. Smith