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This collection contains 12 letters that a woman named Emma received from female friends and family members during the Civil War. Emma's correspondents commented on their social lives on the home front and discussed the increasing toll the war began to take on their male acquaintances, particularly with regard to conscription.

This collection contains 12 letters that a woman named Emma received from female friends and family members during the Civil War. Emma's correspondents commented on their social lives on the home front and discussed the increasing toll the war began to take on their male acquaintances, particularly with regard to conscription.

Nettie Hodgkins of Lock's Village, Massachusetts, was Emma's most frequently correspondent, a childhood friend who often addressed Emma as "Amy." Other writers included a cousin and sister. The letters sometimes have lists of mutual acquaintances who were drafted or otherwise involved with the military, including Emma's brothers, and occasionally refer to soldiers' deaths. One writer lamented the draft's "sad work" (July 21, 1863), and a woman named Esther described the death of her friend Sarah from a fever (December 17, 1864).