September 17, 1862

Dear Friend,
I miss talking to you, walking to your street with out the war around us. How`s your life as a confederate? Here in this world of freedom, and power we feel that the cause to this battle was worthless. Why did you attack? It was just to look for more trouble! As my dear friend you should know the North is right, we want a free, strong nation, including the abolition of slavery, even if you guys don’t believe it, they are humans.

Due to the fact that the South attacked, we were called from our homes in emergency. Our General George B. McClellan was the master mind behind the battle, though he had some problems with President Lincoln, in my opinion it’s never a good sign to be in the wrong side of the president.

Till now dear friend, I’ve been very objective with you telling you how the facts of the war affect us, but, there is more to tell. I`ve been passing trough a mental trouble, I can`t sleep, yesterday we slept in the camp, if you can call that a camp. Right now I’m writing from my battle position, which I’m guessing is where I’m going to be spending the night. In my dreams the few moments I have of those, I hear the gun shots of our Percussion Muskets, and the Parrot Rifle Muzzleloader. Since I’m new, I came to know the name of these weapons here. Then the food, we live from the land, we eat what we find. Most of us are sick because we don’t eat cooked food. Did I mention I live with around 346 men, and that’s just our unit! It’s sad so many lives are threatened on a daily basis. My uniform, which is supposed to be dark blue, is stained with red of blood, of my opponent. I hope we never encounter ourselves in the battlefield, because sadly I represent my Union till death.
Hope this war ends fast, please keep in contact,
Adriana Baiz








Dear friend,

First of all I’m not your enemy, and I really hope that you don’t change your point of view about me. I swear to you, that this is not my fault and I wish that we could solve it in another way, without having to confront our families, since I consider you part of my family, I’m sure that we are not the only ones with this problem. It breaks my heart to see so much people fighting with the ones they love when most of us are not guilty for this battle that the politicians initiated.

I understand that you live in the North where most of the people are struggling from this battles that keep killing more and more people especially the one that we just went through. But you should also know that here in the South is not easy either. Yes, we have slavery. I know that this is bad, forcing people to work in these industries, but is not my fault that we live that way; I didn’t choose to live in the South. As you can see, our issues is that if we abolish the slavery which helps us run factories like the cotton factory and agriculture that are the most important fundamentals for our strong and healthy country. The slavery of this part of the country is a production factor, yes they are human being and I think that through other methods we can be able to use this people as contractors an not as slaves, but this is not the only reason of this war, there’s also other reasons like the politicians that want to get more money want to get more power and many more. If we discuss about reasons it doesn’t make any sense and it would be an endless discussion since we both have good reason that comes with our situation.

Robert E. Lee is our general and we have to use these horrible uniforms that we have to wear are gray and very uncomfortable, not only our food is not healthy, but we get corn from the ground that is not even ready to be eaten. I have been feeling really bad, I decided not to eat those things because some people just eat what they find but I don’t know if I can handle doing that since my stomach hurts all the time. I can also see my own bones sticking out under my skin, that’s how skinny I am. Is not only the union that is suffering in this battle but the confederates are also, you have no idea how many people are here just fighting for the south since we are under Robert E. Lee’s control.

I really didn’t know the names of the guns, I just know that they keep making me crazy everyday I don’t know how we can live like this . I feel weaker and weaker everyday, I don’t have control of what I do or what I’m going to do. I just know that every single moment I see someone die in this battle, I think of him or her that it was a friend for someone, a son or a daughter, or someone’s love. We are all equal anyways, we came from the same country.

I just want to tell you to keep on being strong and everything would be alright.

Yours truly, Ana Chapela