Confederate History Month

On the evening of May 10, 1864 Spotsylvania, Virginia, as the War Between the States ground on into its fourth straight year, 26 year old James Robert Montgomery, a private in the Confederate Signal Corps in Virginia, wrote a letter to his father back home in Camden, Mississippi, dripping blood on the paper as he wrote, from the horrific shoulder wound he had sustained a few hours earlier.

"Dear Father,

This is my last letter to you. I have been struck by a piece of shell, and my right shoulder is horribly mangled and I know death is inevitable. I am very weak, but I write to you because I kno...