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Photograph by Emily J. Davis
One letter was written by a Black soldier fighting for the Union Army to the woman who had enslaved his daughter. Another, written by a Confederate soldier, was pulled off the soldier’s dead body. A sailor, trapped aboard a ship, dashed off a note as Japanese planes were bombing Pearl Harbor. A prisoner of war during World War II scrawled a message on the back of a family photo, shortly before his death. An army sergeant who had pilfered Adolf Hitler’s personal stationery, emblazoned with a swastika, crossed out the name at the top, inserted his own, and penned a letter to his family.