Dear Maude,
I take pen in hand to tell you All is well, I am alive today. Pray that this war ends soon, and I return home to protect you from invaders.
Invaders? Why, my own countrymen, my neighbors conscripted me! I find myself at a loss for words now, when trying to describe to my wife of forty years what is happening in battle, the exploding cannons, violent bloodshed. These people, Blue and Grey, once brothers, now behave like rabid wolves, without conscience... from the greatest to the least. Woe is me. No! Woe to those who forced me into their war at gunpoint, with threats of hanging me, hanging my entire family! Do they have no fear of the Almighty?