S. Love letter to his sister - August 25, 1862

Saltillo
Sept the 8th ../62

Dear Sister
Mr. Sharp and Loyd will leave this place for Texas tomorrow morning and I am attempting to write you a few lines though I have but little to write that you will not have heard before this gets to you. There has been a great deal of fighting Since I wrote before. Gen. Lee has defeated Gens. Pope and McLellan on the plains of Manassas again and has drove them across the Potomac and very likely has possession of Washington City or else he is bombarding it at the present moment. The Federal army in Va. has been hopelessly defeated. Gen. E. Smith has taken Gen Nelson and 9,000 Feds in Tenn -- he parolled them all on the battle field -- Gen. Nelson was mortaly wounded-- Gen Morgan (Fed.) is besieged in the Cumberland Gap and all of his commissary Stores have been cut off he will be compelled to Surrender -- Gen Bragg is in hot persuit of Buell and trying to cut him off from Nashvill -- if he Succeeds Buell will have to Surrender if not he may get away. Gens. Forrest Morgan and Armstrong are doing good service in Tenn and Ky..they have destroyed a great many Rail Road bridges tore up a great deal of the R.R. iron Burnt the commisary Stores of the army of Tenn. taken a great many prisoners besides they have recruited Several thousand The whole Sum of it is this the Feds. have got into an unpleasant fix.

You sill see by the heading of the letter that we have move our camp we are about ten miles up the R.R. from Tupelo. We moved day before-- yesterday. We are Steadily advancing towards Tenn but we are necessarily slow because we have to build R.R. bridges as we go for the purpose of bringing up our commissary Stores. There is several thousand Feds. at Corinth and the first thing they know we will have them in a fix. There is nothing more of importance to write so I will close this part of my letter. I have not heard anything from Cy. for a long time I do not know the reason for I have written him twice Since I come here neither have I heard from John Since the 13th of July or from any of the family since the 8th of Aprile so you may judge of my anxiety to hear from some of you I have not heard from either unkle John or unkle Andrew for a long time Gen Armstrong drove the feds from Denmark 4 or 5 days ago. I expect they have injured unkle John as they have done every body else. This leavs us all in good health and hoping that it will find you all enjoying the Same blessing. Give my love to all the family and relations and all enquiring friends and tll them to write to me as often as they can. With these few badly written lines I remain your brother Sam..

Sept the 9th ../62

P.S. Sincewriting my letter I have learned that the Feds have left Corinth and our advance has taken possession of it. I cannot give and opinion about wher we will bo to Some Say to Memphis while others Say we are goint to the Ohio River. It is reported here that Gen. Bragg says that he is a candidate for military Governor of the State of Ohio though I doubt the report. There is not the least reason now why the foreign powers should not acknolledge our Independence now they will either have to do it or acknolledge the real reason that they have not done it before. The reason in the opinion of here is that they wanted us to fight as long as possible or until we had weakened each other so much that they could come in and bag the whole of both parties they will now have to acknolledge one of two things our Independence or the reason they do not. I was very Sorry to hear of Ewing Caruthers'es deth I was also Sorry to hear of Mr Archibalds being killed by his Son and a little Surprised to hear of McGrews death. You may be a little Surprised about how I learned this so I will tell you. Ben. Kenady got a letter from Mrs Wash Kenady about 10 days since.

It is getting late and I will have to close this post Script.

From your brother
Sam. B. Love

Love Family Correspondence. Special Collections, Burnett Library, Texas Christian University. Fort Worth, TX. (TCU Box 298400)