During his five years in the army, Private William Edward
Matthews wrote a series of exceptionally detailed and engaging
letters to his family back home in Maryland describing his life in
the Arizona and New Mexico Territories. Eddie Matthews's letters,
published here for the first time, provide an unparalleled
chronicle of one soldier's experiences in garrison and in the field
in the post-Civil War Southwest.
Eddie's letters record a vivid chronicle of day-to-day life in
the frontier regulars. Included are operational details in his
company, candid observations of people and places, intimate views
of frontier society, and personal opinions that probably would have
been forgotten or moderated had he recorded his experiences later
in life. More subtle are his valuable references to the state of
transportation and communication in the Southwest during the early
1870s. Matthews probably did not realize until later years that he
was not only a witness to the nation's rapid westward expansion,
but was himself a tiny cog in the machinery that made it
possible.
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