Letter written by Henry E. Edmunds to Claiborne G. Barksdale, a member of the 14th Virginia Regiment, about the patriotic fervor of the early days of the American Civil War, shortly after Virginia ceded from the Union the month before. In the letter, Edmunds wrote of Barksdale joining the Virginia troops, how Edmunds would make a great soldier if he was younger, a local man named Townes gathering up troops to join the fight, and the great condition of the wheat crop.