This collection consists of a fragment of a letter written by an unknown Union soldier, describing his thoughts about the draft--"I think it is right for every man to help save his country"--, emancipation--"I am against freeing the Negro just as mutch [sic] as any person"--and the Battle of Gettysburg--"that was my forth [sic] of July". Very poorly written and virtually illegible in places.

The collection consists of one letter from a soldier to his mother, written from "Washington City", DC (SC?), 7 December 1866. The accompanying envelope is postmarked Washington DC, 24 April, suggesting that it does not belong with the letter. The envelope is addressed to Mrs. Dicy Hicks [sic], of Jonesville, Lee County, Virginia. The letter furnishes few clues about its author, save for the fact that he was barely literate. A partially illegible closing seems to read "Company B 107 USCI," which could stand for the 107th U.S. Colored Infantry regiment. If so, then is it more likely to have been written in South Carolina than in Washington DC, as that regiment was stationed in the Department of the South following the Civil War's end. The body of the letter consists of little more than injunctions to pass the writer's greetings on to friends and family.

The collection includes more than five thousand black and white photographs illustrating the history of The University of Alabama from the middle of the 19th century through the early 1990s, and includes rare images, such as the photograph of the first football team.