As near Hell as I ever expect to be is the biography of a Civil War soldier from Ohio. In September 1861 twenty-seven-year-old John Vanetton Patterson left his young wife and two babies on their farm near Pemberville. Patterson and thousands of other Ohioans answered Lincoln's call to save the Union. In November Victoria Patterson received a letter, she opened it, and read the inside address, "As near Hell as I ever expect to be". Over the next four years this soldier husband was sick, wounded, captured, and imprisoned. He escaped... Based on letters to his wife, this is his story of trial and yearning.