Montgomery, Camden, Madison County, Mississippi, in which a mortally wounded soldier of Confederacy bids a last good-by to his father.

The letter was originally inclosed with one from Lieutenant Ethelbert Fairfax, C.S.A., informing the father that his son passed away soon after he had written.
The text, pitiful and heroic as it is, can give but the faintest idea of the original, with its feeble, laborious writing, and the dark-brown spots dappling the three sheets of paper where blood from the boy's mangled shoulder dripped upon them while he wrote: Spotsylvania County, Va.
May 10, 1864.
Dear Father: This is my last letter to you.

I went into battle this evening as courier for Gen'l Heth.

I have been struck by a piece of shell and my right shoulder is horribly mangled & I know death is inevitable.
I am very weak but I write to you because I know you would be delighted to read a word from your dying son.

I know death is near, that I will die far from home and friends of my early youth, but I have friends here, too, who are kind to me.