In 1962 the Alabama Civil War Centennial Commission reprinted pages 589-705 of Willis Brewer's Alabama which contain brief historical sketches of the military organizations raised in Alabama for Confederate service. The limited number of copies ordered by the Centennial Commission failed to meet the demand for them while the Commission was in existence; nor has the demand diminished since the close of the Centennial years. In an effort to answer requests for the information which Mr. Brewer compiled, the Alabama State Department of Archives and History made a limited number of the excerpts from Brewer's Alabama available as a reprint in 1966. We have made numerous changes / additions to Brewer's original work based on our own research and more recent findings. They provide an introduction to the study of Alabama men who organized to serve in military units during the Civil War. We have also included a section on How to Research Alabama Civil War Soldiers and an extensive bibliography of available books on Alabama history and the Civil War.

The letters of William and Emily tell the story of the war from the perspective of a working-class farm couple from Coffee County Alabama.