#18

Stafford Court House Va,

May 16^th 1863

Dear Wife

I now seat myself to answer your letter dated the 10^th which I received Thursday night was glad to hear from you that you war all well it found me well and still remain the same to day and hope when this reaches you it will find you all the same, it is pleasant here now not very warm this morning but just right to be comfortable from last Sunday then Thursday towards night it was very warm there was a thunder shower Thursday about noon and another towards night when it cleared of very cool and has been so ever since, I have been gone from Stafford four days this week helping move the wounded that the rebs had prisners their was I believe twelve hundred and thirty wounded that they took, it had been ni eleven or twelve days since the battle when they commenced bringing them across the river. I did not go across there was but a few ambulances alowed to go over, those had to bring the wounded to the river then they ware onloaded from the ambulances brought across the river on a section of pontoon bridge and put into other ambulances and carried to the corps hospittle,s those from each corps to their own ho[s]pittle it was a very slow way of getting them over but I think after I came away from there on Thursday they managed to get them away faster for when we had got a little ways from the ford we met a whole pontoon bridge going in that direction, those of the wounded that I saw had fared rather hard they did not get much to eat and their wounds had not been taken care of a good many or the biggar part of them had not been meddled with except to have a rage wound round them and such a smell was what got me I helped load a good many that I thought would knock my head off or at least would make me throw up my insides boots and all, but they poor fellows are to be pittyed some of them the flies had been to work around and they was rather wormy but by this time they are whare they will have good care taken of them, I hope so at any rate, I have not heard anything from any of those that was missing from our company yet but they may still be alive they might some or all of them been among the wounded prisnors and I not have seen them and they might have been taken without being wounded at all, everything seams to be quiet just now but I think it will not last so long I think Jo will give them another trial before long I hope so at any rate if more fighting has got to be done the quicker it is done the better, the report is and I guess it is correct that Stonewall Jackson is dead I presume you have heard of it before this he died from a wound received from one of his own men it seams that he got out side of their lines and was mistaken for one of our men so he got poped I wished they would serve them all in that way I would not cry a bit, Well children I did not hear from any of you in the last letter I received I guess you have forgot me havent you or are you so full of business that you do not get time to write a few lines to your father I suppose Georgia and Frank go to school whilst Edgar is earning his bread by the sweat of the brow, we have moved our camp about a mile from whare it was we are now clost by a family of eleven that not one of them can read or write that is the case with a majority of the poor whites in the south they have no learning at all, I have got a most miserable pen I can hardly write with it at all but I guess you can manage to read a part of my scrabling no more at this time. My love to you all, I remain ever your most affectionate Husband & Father

A.C. Smith

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