The letters vary from 4 to 20 pages each, with a total of 118 pages. On lined notebook paper, 6 are 20.6x6.5 cm (8x5”), 4 are 24.5x20 cm (9¾x7¾”).
Historically significant series of letters from one brother to another during the second year of the American Civil War, the writer Henry S. Wilson serving in the battleground state of Tennessee, and the recipient being James Harrison (“Harry”) Wilson, who served under both McClellan and Grant, and rose to Major General, retiring after the war ended but returning to serve in the Spanish-American War. Henry Wilson’s first letter, March 6, 1862, is written from Fort Donelson, Tennessee, and refers to “our Great and Glorious victory at this place, “on the 12th we met and drove in the enemy’s pickets – on the 13th I was thrown forward with my co. as skirmishers we soon found ourselves within sight of the rebels long row of rifle pits and breast works we exchanged a great many shots but to little effect on the other side… I gave my men the order to fire at the same time fired my pistol they returned the fire but not knowing our positions overshot us doing no damage – after the first excitement was over two of my boys crawled down the road and a few moments came back with the first ‘Secesh’ that had been killed at the Fort…” On April 11th, describing the Battle of Shiloh, “I will endeavor to narrate – not describe for that is impossible!! the scenes of the Horrid, the Bloody and above all the hardest fought battle that ever was fought on this continent, Donelson, Henry, even to Bunker Hill and Waterloo sink into insignificance when compared with the bloody battle that began here on the morning of the 6th and raged with all the fury of a contest for life and death into the morning of the 8th inst. I was in the heat of contest all day the 6th & 7th (Sunday & Monday) when I was relieved late on the night of the 6th I was so completely exhausted… that I sank down in the field among the dead and dying who covered the ground by the thousands for five miles around…” In the final letter, August 11th, 1862, written from Brownsville, Tennessee, Henry turns somewhat political, and racist, “Hundreds of the infernal abolitionists are crowding the cars for Canada to keep from being drafted. Harry indeed I don’t know what to think about the plan upon which they are carrying out the war – indeed we hear nothing here but the Negro!! And let me here say that whenever they – the U.S. – adopts the policy “Arming the Blacks” I am no longer bound to my obligation to support her… I am proud to see that Mr. Lincoln has come out like a man and said that that he had decided not to arm the Blacks… I say if we have not enough patriotic white men to maintain the law and order of the Union, let it go…” One of the letters is incomplete, it is the only one not written from the front in Tennessee, but is from Shawneetown, Illinois, while Henry was on leave. The letters were written to James H. Wilson while he was stationed at Port Royal, South Carolina, when occupied by Union forces.