In 1861, Alfred Lacey Hough, a thirty-five-year-old commission merchant, left his wife, his two sons, and a comfortable home in Philadelphia to enlist as a sergeant in the Pennsylvania Volunteers. In his letters to his wife, Hough—who achieved the rank of captain and then brevet lieutenant colonel—revealed his complete devotion to Northern war aims, for he was an ardent champion of the Union cause. Each letter to his Dearest Mary is the expression of a conscientious soldier who took great care to preserve for his descendants all of his experiences and observations during four crucial years of his life.

Written by an educated, literate soldier, these letters—first published in 1957—are at once a valuable primary source for the historian and an exciting recreation of the events and moods of war. Hough served in the Western theater of operations, and his accounts of such battles as Corinth and Chickamauga, of the incidents along the route of Sherman’s march on Atlanta, contain all the color and impact of eyewitness description.