A MASSIVE AMOUNT of correspondence passed between Union armies and the home front. Chaplain Richard Eddy of the 60th New York Infantry, who also served as the regimental postmaster, noted in April 1863 that he “mailed for the regiment 3855 letters during the month.”
The Army of the Potomac comprised 238 infantry regiments, 29 cavalry regiments, and 65 artillery batteries during the Gettysburg campaign, some two months after Chaplain Eddy made his count. If men in all units wrote home at approximately the same rate as the New Yorkers, more than a million letters probably left the army in a single month. The
