In 1998, Andrew Carroll founded the Legacy Project, with the goal of remembering Americans who have served their nation and preserving their letters for posterity. Since then, over 50,000 letters have poured in from around the country. Nearly two hundred of them comprise this amazing collection -- including never-before-published letters that appear in the new afterword. Here are letters from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf war, Somalia, and Bosnia -- dramatic eyewitness accounts from the front lines, poignant expressions of love for family and country, insightful reflections on the nature of warfare. Amid the voices of common soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors, nurses, journalists, spies, and chaplains are letters by such legendary figures as Gen. William T. Sherman, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Ernie Pyle, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Julia Child, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Sr. Collected in War Letters, they are an astonishing historical record, a powerful tribute to those who fought, and a celebration of the enduring power of letters.

Joseph Carter of Bear Lake PA was 34 years old when he was drafted into the Union Army in 1863, serving until the end of the Civil War. He was married to Mary Ellen Howles in 1854. They had a successful 90 acre farm and five children in the Village of Bear Lake in northwestern Pennsylvania. Joseph was an older soldier by any measurement. He was not rich, famous, commissioned or privileged so his writing is that of a simple gentleman. He served as an infantryman with the 82nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment throughout the war seeing many skirmishes and battles. We are fortunate to have the exchange of letters between Joseph and Mary. As paper was very scarce in army camps, Joseph would write on the back of Mary’s letters and send them back to her. Joseph was a foot soldier thought out his enlistment. He endured the boredom of soldiering, periodic carnage of battle and incarceration in Libby Prison as a Prisoner of War. Mary and the children stayed at the farm and kept it running while awaiting his return. The letters they exchanged showed how they tried to keep each other’s spirits up while they were apart. Mary kept Joseph apprised of the happening with the family, the farm, and the village. Joseph in turn wrote Mary of his travels, battles, and army camp life. Joseph nearly died during his imprisonment at Libby Prison in Richmond VA in January-February 1865. He was so emaciated after he was released from the Army hospital at Camp Parole on furlough home that no one recognized him. It was said that you could see candle light through his hands. He returned to the army in June 1865 and served till the 82nd was mustered out in July 1865. After the war, he returned to his wife Mary and the farm at Bear Lake. They had seven more children. At age 46, in 1876 he applied for a veteran’s pension due to health issues from Libby Prison. He died at age 50 on 7 July 1889.

From the Kentucky Campaign to Tullahoma, Chickamauga to Missionary Ridge, junior officer Joshua K. Callaway took part in some of the most critical campaigns of the Civil War. His twice-weekly letters home, written between April 1862 and November 1863, chronicle his gradual change from an ardent Confederate soldier to a weary veteran who longs to be at home. Callaway was a schoolteacher, husband, and father of two when he enlisted in the 28th Alabama Infantry Regiment at the age of twenty-seven. Serving with the Army of the Tennessee, he campaigned in Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee, and north Georgia. Along the way this perceptive observer and gifted writer wrote a continuous narrative detailing the activities, concerns, hopes, fears, discomforts, and pleasures of a Confederate soldier in the field. Whether writing about combat, illness, encampments, or homesickness, Callaway makes even the everyday aspects of soldiering interesting. This large collection, seventy-four letters in all, is a valuable historical reference that provides new insights into life behind the front lines of the Civil War.

This book was originally printed in 1925 by Paul Ayres Rockwell, the brother of Kiffin Yates Rockwell. These brothers are my, Shane Kiffin Ayers, 3rd Cousins 3-times removed, and I am named after Kiffin. Paul compiled this book to honor his brother and many others as they fought for justice in the world. These letters give a peek into the window of real soldiers doing unimaginable work. Enjoy and Shalom on your Journey to becoming a Hero.

Between 1914 and 1918, Roland Mountfort served in the ranks with the Royal Fusiliers (10th and 25th Battalions) on the Western Front. He was a shrewd and highly literate observer of military life and his letters provide an excellent record of a young man's experiences in the Army during the Great War. This title features his letters.

Wartime letters include correspondence of Union and Confederate sympathizers and soldiers of all ranks. Authentic illustrations accompany insightful missives by Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Whitman, Davis, and many of their contemporaries.

In 1861 young Joseph Twichell cut short his seminary studies to become a Union Army chaplain in New York's Excelsior Brigade. A middle-class New England Protestant, Twichell served for three years in a regiment manned mostly by poor Irish American Catholics. This selection of Twichell's letters to his Connecticut family will rank him alongside the Civil War's most literate and insightful firsthand chroniclers of life on the road, in battle, and in camp. As a noncombatant, he at once observed and participated in the momentous events of the Peninsula and Wilderness Campaigns and at the Second Bull Run, as well as at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Spotsylvania. Twichell writes about politics and slavery and the theological and cultural divide between him and his men. Most movingly, he tells of tending the helpless, burying the dead, and counseling the despondent. Alongside accounts of a run-in with slave hunters, a massive withdrawal of wounded soldiers from Richmond, and other extraordinary events, Twichell offers close-up views of his commanding officer, the "political general" Daniel Sickles, surely one of the most colorful and controversial leaders on either side. Civil War scholars and enthusiasts will welcome this fresh voice from an underrepresented class of soldier, the army chaplain. Readers who know of Twichell's later life as a prominent minister and reformer or as Mark Twain's closest friend will appreciate these insights into his early, transforming experiences.