Excerpt from Army Letters, 1861-1865: Being Extracts From Private Letters to Relatives and Friends From a Soldier in the Field During the Late Civil War, With an Appendix Containing Copies of Some Official Documents, Papers and Addresses of Later Date During this period of four and one-half years he wrote, at short inter vals, letters to relatives and friends, describing his experiences as a private soldier and officer. Some of these letters have been collected and printed in this volume with a view to preserving for his children and friends a record of a soldier's life in the time of the Civil War They are printed exactly as written, without alteration or addition. Some paragraphs of purely personal nature, or which have no reference to army life, have been omitted. It may be thought that many others might have been left out with advantage, but the purpose of presenting as accurately as possible the life of a soldier, and the ideas and motives which actuated him as revealed in his letters, would not be so well served by such omission. This volume is printed for private circulation only. The letters have no literary merit. Little will be expected in this respect from a young man whose education was limited to such instruction as he could obtain in district schools and village academies before completing his sixteenth year. No apology is made for crude or even coarse expressions, because to change the letters in any respect would be to destroy any value they may have. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.