The salary of a private in the army is $12, monthly and fed & uniformed. I know it is a hard life, but anything for my Native Land, wrote William T. Shepherd, a Wisconsin native enlisted in Battery B of the First Illinois Light Artillery. During his three years in the Western theater, Shepherd served as both an artilleryman and a clerk in several ordnance offices, all the while carefully recording his experiences and observations in letters to his family.A keen chronicler of camp life and the vicissitudes of soldiering, Shepherd wrote extremely detailed and enlightening battle accounts. He...