Camp ten miles south of Hamburg, Tennessee

Sunday evening, May 4^th, 1862

My Dear Wife:-

You can hardly conceive how anxious I am to have a letter from you. I have not had a letter from you since three weeks last night, but have wrote at least four and I feel confident that you got the one with the money in it, for I sent it by Sergeant Breeze and he gave it to Eldridge Jones at Patoka.  You certainly had time to answer it.  Why is it that you have not answered it as well as the rest.  You cannot tell how it makes me feel to see hundreds of letters each day and none for me.  I wrote you a week ago, I hope you have received it before this time, but it may be that you do not get my letters any better than I get yours.

We have moved again our encampment about five miles, and now we are within one mile of the line of the State of Mississippi. We are under orders to march again tomorrow morning at 7 o’clock.  In fact we had our horses saddled and out waggons loaded this morning, but the order was countermanded and we lie over till morning.  I would wait till after we move before I write but that would be too long, as I have always wrote to you regularly each week and some times two letters in one week.  The weather is wet and rainy today, but I hope we may have good weather tomorrow.  We are having skirmishes with the enemy almost every day, which comes off to our good.

Yesterday there was a very brisk cannonading for some little time.  I have not heard the exact result but hear that our guns drove the enemy in at a little town called Farmington.  It is about seven miles from here.  I do hope that before next Sunday I will be able to give you an account of the taking of Corinth.  You are no doubt looking this way with an anxious mind and hoping that it may come off to the glory of the Federal arms.  I hope it may, and I think it will be almost the death struggle of Rebellion in this part of the Southern Confederacy.  Our scouts are capturing and bringing in prisoners almost every day.

The country around our camp is rather hilly and very poor.  The last years crop along here was nearly all cotton.  I have seen yesterday something that you will not be likely to see for some time to come.  It was a field of wheat headed out and in bloom.  But there is not much wheat or rye growing in this part of the country.  In fact there seems to be nothing going on but the war.  This war will blast the fortunes of hundreds and thousands of people, both north and south.  What a pity that this war every commenced; how soon will it end?

I was left back at our camp a couple of days and one night to take care of some things that we could not haul.  If I ever saw a lonely place, it is a deserted military camp.  I have thought that the Sandy Branch camp ground just after Camp meeting was a lonely place, but only think of a camp of ten or fifteen thousand mean all leaving within an hour or two, except two or three men to each company.  At night all is still except an occasional laugh or the neigh of a horse.  You must be aware that such a time any one is bound to feel the stillness of the place, which could not be felt only on account of the great company that was saw on the ground but a few hours before.

Foster Moon and William Arnold are both still in the hospital at Hamburg.  Foster is better.  Sergeant Beebe is there also.  I have had a diarrhea for some time but keep up and do my duty.  I hope I may be able to do my duty as long as I stay in the service.

Charlie Lee is with us now.  He went home from Cairo as we came up past there.

I now hear that John Hamilton has gone to Evansville Indiana. I hope he may soon be able to go home.  You will excuse me for the present as I sent you a note in a letter to Dave a day or two ago.

Good Bye,

William A. Smith