A Confederate Surgeon's Letters to His Wife

The title page of A Confederate Surgeon's Letters to His Wife names Spencer Glasgow Welch, Surgeon, Thirteenth South Carolina Volunteers, McGowan’s Brigade. The introduction says many of the letters written from the battlefield, camp, bivouac or during a halt on the march were lost. The introduction says it has been necessary to condense the letters that were received in order to form them into a small volume, by eliminating only the most uninteresting, personal matter. The introduction says the work was done with the greatest care possible by the surgeon’s daughter, who is President of the Daughters of the Confederacy for the State of South Carolina.

One letter says the writer was sent to Richmond to look after the sick, and had an opportunity to observe the shocking results of a battle. The writer says he never heard such a rattle of musketry surpassed, and that it lasted for about two hours and a half without cessation. One letter says the writer will send one hundred and fifty dollars as soon as he can, to pay the expenses of coming out.