Stephen, it is of course one sided, as is Wiley Britton's, but you cannot compare the two. For one Britton was reporting what he saw, felt and did. The second he wrote much of his work after the war from his journals. He went beyond that and inputed his own beliefs. On the personal level of writing letters to a loved one or a friend, that is an entirely different matter. An individual in a war zone wrties home about those things he sees, feels and does that is happening in his particular part of the war. At that level you can only be one sided as what you know is what someone else tells you or what the papers say. The same is true for rebel accounts, read John N. Edwards works and you have a completly biased account of events. Read the letters of a Sergeant Toler of the 31st Texas Cavalry as he follows his regiment from Texas through the indian nation to Fort Smith burying men who die from Small Pox or other diseases. He wrote only eight letters before he died at Fort Smith in early September 1862. Those letters say the same thing as Days in many ways but that is every soldier. Of course they are one sided but they still convey the image of the life of an enlisted man. This of course can be expanded into many areas, but I think I have conveyed the image I am after.