While there are many collections of “letters from the Civil War battlefield” this book is less common—it is a set of timeless and loving “letters from home” saved by the soldier. The collection represents “an anthem” of the wisdom of family love. Marnie Baldwin Schrader has carefully transcribed her family letters—eloquent and loving, longing for a son and brother’s return, filled with news and gossip from the home front, always reminding the “missing brother” of his importance to the family, and the understanding of his importance to the just and noble cause. On June 22, 1863, seventeen-year-old, Frances Ingersoll, wrote to brother Charles “ I believe this war to be a retribution for the sin of this nation and when the Almighty has sufficiently chastised and humbled us, He will put forth His hand and save us.” Abraham Lincoln repeated Frances’ prescient sentiment in his Second Inaugural Address: “ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came,… Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.