Here is the full copoy of the letter (the original is at the Wilson Rounds Library in Chapel Hill NC):

Supreme Court of Alabama
Consultation Room
Montgomery

Dear ‘Tilda

Forty years ago to-day- Sunday, April 6th 1862- was the first day of the battle of Shiloh. I remember it as if it was yesterday. I was fishing or “going in washing” down at the creek [Limestone] and hear cannonading. It could not be heard away from the water. I went to the house and told of it. Cousin Will Wright was there. Then we all went down to the creek and all hear the great guns. Two or three days later we got the news and learned that we had been listening to the battle of Shiloh about 120 miles away. Do you remember it? I have told about it often, and have doubtless not infrequently been thought to be romancing or mistaken. But I read not long since an article on the distance sound will carry on water and the conclusions tally with our experience on that day. What a long, long time it has been! Forty years! But what ----changes have come to us since that beautiful Sunday morning in 1862! Memory is busy with that long gone day and the----of intervening time, and fills in with sorrow and the sense of age and loneliness

Aff
T.N.Mc