The Read correspondence has three principal authors: Martha White Read, her husband Thomas Griffin Read, and Griffin's brother John Henry Read. The most memorable of these voices is that of Martha White Read (b. 1833/34), called Mattie. Of the 28 wartime letters in the correspondence, fifteen were written by Mattie Read, mostly to her husband. Four of these letters date from the summer of 1861; another five from the months between February and August 1862; and five more from October 1864 to January 1865. Six of the ten letters of T. G. Read were written from Point Lookout prison, from September 1864 to January 1865. Of the others, one (dated 27 July 1861) was written from camp at Manassas shortly after First Bull Run; a second (11-12 July 1863) was written on the retreat from Gettysburg; a third (6 May 1864) from the Wilderness, a day after Read was wounded; and a fourth (26 March 1865) was written from Waynesboro to Read's parents at New Market, after his release from Point Lookout. John Henry Read's three letters include one written to Mattie from western Virginia (23-24 June 1861), and two written to T. G. Read from prison (10 November and 9 December 1864). The Read correspondence thus spans nearly the full course of the war, though the long months between August 1862 and May 1864 are represented by only two items. The collection also includes three pre- and post-war letters and several non-epistolary manuscripts (including two furlough passes for T. G. Read, for 12 to 22 February 1862 and 13 May to 11 July 1864). There are also two wartime newspaper clippings, and a group of nine Read family Confederate covers not immediately identifiable with any of the letters. Mattie Read's letters of 1861-62 are ardent in their support of the Confederate cause. The Shenandoah Valley was not historically secessionist, but Lincoln's call for troops following the surrender of Fort Sumter was viewed with outrage, and swayed public opinion towards separation. On 17 April 1861, two days after the president's proclamation, the Virginia convention passed an ordinance of secession, later ratified in Augusta County by an overwhelming margin. Nowhere in the surviving letters does Mattie seek to rationalize Southern independence; rather, she justifies the war as an essentially defensive measure, against a Northern policy of wanton aggression. On occasion the vehemence of her prose is quite marked, as in her reaction to the death of Private William Finley in the letter of 16-17 February 1862 ("Northern demons. . . . fiendish wretches. . . . murdering vandals. . . . degraded specimens of humanity.") And in more than one letter she acknowledges the necessity of sacrifice: "Hard as it would be for me to give you up, dearest one, I would rather that you and many others would fall in sacrifice to Lincoln's bullets than that his ruffian hordes should lay waste our country . . . but God grant that there may be little bloodshed in our future, and may He bring you back safely to me." (7-12 August 1861).