Letters from the Carnival of Death: Correspondence from Three of Terry’s Texas Rangers

In 1861 the Hill boys of Hill’s Prairie (near Bastrop, Texas) rode off to war. They had signed on with Col. Benjamin Franklin Terry’s 8th Texas Cavalry, better knows as Terry’s Texas Rangers, one of the most celebrated Confederate regiments of the Civil War. They fought in approximately 275 engagements in seven states. The missives contained in this volume were penned by John, Robert and D.O. Hill to their sister, Mary Scott Hill, during the War Between the States. The letters show the daily camp life of the soldiers of the Confederacy, their privations, their worries for one another, for their families back home and for the South. They demonstrate in the most candid and personal manner the trials and hopes of the Confederate soldier during one of the tumultuous periods in American history.