“What we have in this slim, but evocative, paperback is a chance to experience and appreciate a soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia much as his family would have done.”
—Civil War Courier
“I expect to be a man of honor to our country at the risk to my life.”
—Pvt. Eli Pinson Landers, letter dated September 24, 1863,
camp near Chattanooga, Tenn.
When her neighbor handed her the stack of yellowed letters that had been rescued from an Atlanta, Georgia, pile of trash, author Elizabeth Whitley Roberson had no idea who Eli Pinson Landers was. Landers, a Confederate soldier in the Civil War, was the author of these evocative, insightful letters written to his mother, Susan Landers, back in their home of Yellow River, Georgia.
His letters include Civil War history, battle details, and an emerging portrait of a young man who loved his family and country. Written with the faith and steadfast loyalty of a young soldier, the missives reveal to us a human dimension of that bloodiest of all American wars that we are seldom permitted to see.