Emma Randolph, a young woman not yet twenty, wrote poignant letters to her distant cousin, Private Walter G. Dunn of the 11th New Jersey Infantry, as he lay in a crowded, filthy hospital ward during the Civil War after suffering the carnage of the battle of Chancellorsville. There, barely recovered, he aided overworked surgeons when the Gettysburg wounded poured into the city, and regularly took up his pen. Their correspondence related everyday events that became history.