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Excerpt from A Soldier's Letters to Charming Nellie Such preface as the following pages require is furnished by the first letter. An introduction, however, will not be amiss. The body of troops known in the Army of Northern Virginia as Hood's Texas Brigade, as originally organized, was composed of the First, Fourth, and Fifth Texas regiments, the Eighteenth Georgia Regiment and Hampton's South Carolina Legion. In 1862 the Eighteenth Georgia and Hampton's Legion were transferred to other brigades, the Third Arkansas Regiment taking their place in the Texas Brigade, and continuing a part of it until the close of the war between the States. One and perhaps two companies of the First Texas got to Virginia in time to participate in the first battle of Manassas, or Bull Run, as it is called by the Federals. Its other companies arrived in Virginia after that battle, and the regiment was organized with Louis T. Wigfall as colonel, Hugh McLeod as lieutenant-colonel, and A. T. Rainey as major. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The author of this book, Joseph Benjamin Polley (1840-1918) was the son of original Texas pioneers. The Polley family came to Texas with Stephen F. Austin in 1821 as one of the Old Three Hundred colonists and settled near San Antonio. Polley joined the Fourth Texas Regiment as a private in 1861 and advanced in rank to Quarter Master Sergeant. The letters were written to "Charming Nelly," and tell the stories of a Confederate regiment during the War Between the States. Between 1862 and 1864, Polley wrote twenty-eight letters to "Charming Nelly," who Polley had only met three brief times. Although he joined the Confederate army in 1861, his letters to "Charming Nelly" did not begin until 1862. It remains unknown if these letters were really sent to Nelly or were just a pretext for Polley to write about his war-time experiences. Nonetheless, these stories give voice to a soldier and make known an exceeding amount of action that took place on the front lines, as well as humorous incidences in camp.