"I picked up some old letters, bills of negro sales, &c., that were lying around, which are quite indicative of southern character..." A correspondent of the Luzerne Union of Wilkes-Barre, PA wrote about encountering formerly enslaved people at the Virginia home of a woman arrested for assisting Confederate soldiers. Read the full letter.
"Doubly armed against both Satan and seceders..." Luzerne County attorney Caleb E. Wright visited the encampment of the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves near Washington in October 1861. He described camp life for the regiment and some of the characters he met during his visit, before musing on the consequences of the Civil War. Read the full letter.
A soldier writing under the pen name "Shoulder Arms" describes conditions at the camp of Company F, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves in the woods along the Potomac River north of Washington, DC. He described the sound of distant cannon fire, friendly fire incidents, and the hope that the time would some come to "strike a death-blow to traitors, secession, and treason." Read the full letter.
A soldier kneels at his young wife's grave - then marches back to war. Luther Dodson's wife Sarah died of tuberculosis at 25, less than a year after their wedding. He came home on leave that August, visited her grave at dusk, and wrote about it in a letter that stands as some of the most moving passages in this entire series. Then he went back to the front. Read the letter.
Israel P. Long survived a harrowing ordeal at the notorious Confederate prison camp after being captured in May 1864.