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...