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Letters to their family in Ohio from James M. Hartley and Thomas J. Hartley. James M. Hartley served in the Ohio 116th. Volunteer Infantry, Company B stationed during the Civil War at Romney, WV; Winchester, VA; Sharpsburg, MD; Martinsburg, WV; and Richmond, VA. Thomas J. Hartley was mustered into an unidentified Ohio regiment at Camp Ripley, OH and served in Stanford, KY and Nicholasville, KY. These letters, most being from James M. Hartley, reflect conditions in the U. S. Army in the field during the Civil War mentioning late payroll payments and occasional shortages of food rations. The correspondence of James M. Hartley is more detailed with him giving his opinions about the battles of Antietam, Chancellorsville, and the siege of Richmond. Often he notes that the Confederates surrender due to inadequate food provisions.

Civil War diaries of Lewis Schaeffer (b. July 4, 1833), of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who served in Company A of the 68th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers (Scott Legion of Philadelphia) from September 1862 to June 1865. Collection consists of three pocket diaries on microfilm. They cover the periods from September-December 1862; 1863, and January-June 1865. There is no diary for 1864. Schaeffer provides only brief descriptions of his combat service, but offers a detailed record of army life in between battles. He carefully traces his movements and marches and comments frequently on the weather, surrounding landscape, and conditions in quarters, including his food, daily activities in camp, letters sent and received, inspection, drill, dress parade, and desertion and discipline. He also describes his picket and guard duty as well as cattle guard duty. Schaeffer did not see a lot combat, but he does describe his service during the Mud March, the battle of Second Fredericksburg, and the battle of Gettysburg, where he was wounded. Schaeffer also records his activities transporting Confederate prisoners from Virginia to Union prisoners at Point Lookout and Hart's Island in the spring of 1865.

Civil War materials collected by Dr. Brooks in writing his biographies of Grant and Lee. Included are pamphlets, scrapbooks, newspapers, photographs, and originals and copies of soldiers' letters, journals, and military reports. There are typed copies of a journal, 3 November-2 December 1863, of a civilian observer in Tennessee, who was at Grant's headquarters at the Battle of Chattanooga; letters, 1861-1864, of William Ludwig, a private in the Thirty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry in Fayette, Kanawha, and Cabell counties; Confederate officers' reports on the action around Beverly in July 1863; and a Union soldier's letter of 9 May 1863, describing the Battle of Chancellorsville.