Correspondence from Pvt. Beach of the 55th Illinois Infantry, Company G, to his mother describing everyday camp life in La Grange and Memphis, Tenn., Washington, D.C., and Big Shanty [now Kennesaw], Ga.

Twenty-two letters of Richard Realf to Laura B. Merritt and her sister Marian Merritt Cramer of Chicago, written while in active service in the Illinois Eighty-eighth Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War, 1864-1865. Also, two poems of Realf’s and a poem written by Marian Cramer.