Excerpt from Letters of a Family During the War for the Union 1861-1865, Vol. 1 These few happen to have been saved from a much larger number, which, coming almost daily at times from the brother (Charles), at the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac, and the sisters in Hospital service, were carefully filed by the eldest sister, Abby, in orderly succession, and, when the home was broken up, were stored in the Morrell warehouse in New York. There, later, with all our Mother's household possessions, they were destroyed by fire, to the deep and lasting regret of all who knew the writers and the times they had passed through. Dr. Prentiss, our long-time friend and pastor, writes: "The destruction of Charley's letters from the front in the Morrell fire was an irreparable loss, and gave me, I remember, a real shock, for I knew how precious they would have been, sooner or later, not in your family history only, but in the inner personal history of the war." 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.