Art and letters: Soldiers write home

Top of a patriotic stationery from a letter Connecticut soldiers sent home.
(Connecticut Historical Society Civil Manuscripts Project)

In reading letters from Civil War soldiers to their families back home in Connecticut at the Connecticut Historical Society recently, I was struck by the beauty of some of the patriotic stationery. I shot this photo of the top of a letter three soldiers in the 8th Connecticut from Canton wrote to a woman back home to thank her for mittens and stockings she had sent. Love the quote at the bottom. All three of the soldiers were dead nine months after the letter was sent on Dec. 16, 1861. One of them, a private named Martin Wadhams, was killed at Antietam on Sept. 17, 1862.