In this charming little volume Karen Stokes has collected beautiful and moving documents that display the interior life of Southerners of the 19th century. These letters portray deep and long-lasting love between husbands and wives and much else about the life of the time. They reflect the hearts and minds of a very admirable people of the antebellum and Confederate South. * * * FROM THE INTRODUCTION In the centuries before electronic communication such as telephone and the Internet began to dominate most parts of the world, the primary way that people communicated with each other over distance was through letter writing. Nowadays, this practice is often regarded as dead or dying out, and many fewer people sit down with pen and paper to compose a message to someone else. In earlier times, however, and even through much of the twentieth century, it was a common practice, and those of us alive today are fortunate that so many of these documents survive - documents which open up a very personal window into the past and help us to understand the people and culture of an earlier age.