I take my pen in hand to write you a few lines informing you that I am in the land of the living and well and unhurt. I see by the Cincinnati Times that there was a tremendous battle fought here on Sunday and Monday the 6th and 7th. If you had been here you would thought so too. The rebles commenced the attack about day break. They drove us all to the river landing or closed us up till our Army covered about one mile square when three gun boats opened fire up a ravine and they fell like grass before a scythe…

At daybreak our army opened fire on the enemy, Beulls force it was that opened the Ball the second day, his force having arrived during the night. Boath armies fought terrible during the second day till about noon when the rebles began to retreat which they kept up till four oclock when they started for Corinth every fellow for himself and the devil for all. They went like our men went from Manassas in great confusion.

Out loss is between seven and ten thousand killed and 30 or 40 thousand wounded. The loss of the enemy is larger than ours. Some of the dead rebles was not buried untill yesterday the Job being a big one it took several days & the horses is unburied yet and smell very loud…

Daton randall kill the first morning, forg michell wounded in the forhead by buckshot reported from the hospital dead. The musketry was at times as regular as hail falling on the roof of the house interrupted by cannon balls belching its insides out which cut off many limbs which fell on and hurt many off our men  some of the balls going through trees two feet in diameter. The trees are all bulletmarked some having the balls in them.

I was not directly in the battle the first day. I was unloading the wounded all the first day till night when I went with a boat load to Savannah ten miles below. I waited on 20 men day & night untill Tuesday morning when I left and came up here on a boat… I wrote when in camp Dennison. If you expect any more letters from me you will have to answer this to insure it.

D. R. Stevenson

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At about the same time Stevenson wrote to his father, a Confederate soldier named Andrew DeVilbiss sent the following to his wife, offering his impressions of the battle's aftermath. (DeVilbiss self-censored the epithet concerning Northern soldiers. Both this letter and the one by Stevenson, above, were published for the first time and in their entirety in BEHIND THE LINES.)

Corinth, Miss.

Dear Mary:     

I hurriedly write you a few lines to let you know that I am well…. I am anxious you should hear from me. It is given up to be the hardest fought battle on the American Continent.     

The Yankee camps, that we took were beautifully located with fine springs running down in branches, but on Monday morning I saw those branches having their waters all colored with blood. O Mary you could never form an idea of the horrors of actual war unless you saw the battlefields while the conflict is progressing. Death in every awful form, if it really be death, is a pleasant sight in comparison to the fearfully and mortally wounded. Some crying oh, my wife, my children, others my Mother, my sister, my brother etc. any and all of these terms you will hear while some pray to God to have mercy and the others die cursing the “Yankee sons of b_____s.”     

It is a grand and awful sight to and one that can never be forgotten.

My leg is yet a little black from the spent minnie ball that struck me, as I told you in my letter before. I am thankful to God for bringing me safely through. Go to the Church and thank him also, and pray for my preservation, and tell my boys to do the same. The man waits. Good bye. God bless you.

Andrew

P.S. Write to me by mail. I may have better luck here, and send otherwise, when you can. Your affectionate husband

Both Stevenson and DeVilbiss would later be killed in the war.

NEXT WEEK: An extraordinary letter from Pearl Harbor by a young sailor trapped inside the U.S.S. New Orleans .