The letters which poured forth from camps were usually written under adverse circumstances. Save for brief periods in garrison or winter quarters, soldiers rarely enjoyed the luxury of a writing desk or table. Most of the letters were written in the hubbub of camp, on stumps, pieces of bark, drum heads, or the knee. In the South, after the first year of the war, paper and ink were very poor. Scarcity of paper caused many Southerners to adopt the practice of cross writing, i. e., after writing from left to right of the page in the usual manner, they gave the sheet a half turn and wrote from end to end across the lines previously written. Sometimes soldiers wrote letters while bullets were whizzing about their heads. A Yank writing from Vicksburg, May 28, 1863, stated ``Not less than 50 balls have passed over me since I commenced writing. I could tell you of plenty narrow escapes, but we take no notice of them now.'' A Reb stationed near Petersburg informed his mother: ``I need not tell you that I dodge pretty often, for you can see that very plainly by the blots in this letter. Just count each blot a dodge and add in a few for I don't dodge every time.'' Another Reb writing under similar circumstances before Atlanta reported: ``The Yankees keep Shooting so I am afraid they will knock over my ink, so I will close.''

The most common type of letter was that of soldier husbands to their wives. But fathers often addressed communications to their small children; and these, full of homely advice, are among the most human and revealing of Civil War letters. Rebs who owned slaves occasionally would include in their letters admonitions or greetings to members of the Negro community. Occasionally they would write to the slaves. Early in the war it was not uncommon for planters' sons to retain in camp Negro ``body servants'' to perform the menial chores such as cooking, foraging, cleaning the quarters, shining shoes, and laundering clothes. Sometimes these servants wrote or dictated for enclosure with the letters of their soldier masters messages to their relatives and to members of their owners' families.