Letters to Lizzie: The Story of Sixteen Men in the Civil War and the One Woman Who Connected Them All (James M. Scythes - DLM)

by James M. Scythes During the American Civil War, soldiers frequently wrote letters to friends and family members as a way of maintaining their connections to loved ones at home. However, most of the published collections of Civil War letters contain correspondence between just two individuals. Letters to Lizzie: The Story of Sixteen Men in the Civil War and the One Woman Who Connected Them All contains a collection of letters exchanged between 16 men―15 soldiers and a quartermaster at a military hospital―and one young woman, Lizzie Brick. Since Lizzie herself could not bear arms, she took up her pen and through ongoing correspondence helped these Union soldiers sustain their motivation for the cause. The men served in 11 different regiments in the Army of the Potomac, and their correspondence reveals unique insights into the connections between home front and battlefront during the Civil War and into the dynamics of male-female friendships in the 19th century. The letters span the en