The Edwards papers include 60 manuscript items, all with a bearing on the Civil War service of Robert Sedgwick Edwards. About 20 per cent of these items postdate Edwards's death. Forty-five of the manuscripts are personal letters, authored during the war. Fourteen were written by Robert Edwards himself: five to relatives in Andover and Brooklyn, and nine to friends in Philadelphia. Of the 28 letters written by Robert's older brother, Ogden Ellery Edwards, Jr. (b. 1829), and by Ogden's wife Helen E. Edwards (known as Nellie), twenty-two are addressed to Robert; there is also one written to Annie, and five to another sister, Frances (Fanny) Edwards Rogers. The remaining letters include one addressed to William W. Edwards by Cpl. Dayton Britton of Co. C, 48th New York, describing Robert's death, and two more addressed to Annie by Edward D. Edwards, a cousin, and Rev. William Allen, a family friend from Northampton, Massachusetts. The collection also contains three maps, all sketched by Robert but undated, showing 1) the 48th New York's maneuvers at Port Royal Ferry; 2) the layout of the regiment's camp at an unspecified location; and 3) a plan of Fort Pulaski. The papers also include several printed items, including a copy of Rev. Storrs's funeral sermon, published in 1864. There are also several pieces of realia, including a 5 x 9 cm. fragment of the surrender flag flown over Fort Pulaski in April 1862, which Robert mailed to a relative in Brooklyn. The presence in the collection of several manuscript notes of later nineteenth-century origin, written in two unidentified hands, suggests that the papers were purposely gathered and preserved to commemorate Robert's death, most likely by family members. Ogden's and Nellie's letters typically fill the four pages of a single folded sheet, while Robert's tend to be considerably longer, filling sometimes six, eight, and even ten pages of multiple sheets, and often taking advantage of all available space in the folds and margins. Robert Edwards's letters—addressed to his sister Annie, his aunt Helen, his cousin Mary, and to friends in Philadelphia identified only as "Charley" and "Miss Leavitt" (the former possibly Charles W. Leavitt, who served in Pennsylvania emergency regiments called up during the 1862 Maryland and 1863 Gettysburg campaigns)—reveal a generally sober and practical cast of mind. Though he was confident in the eventual success of Union arms, he harbored no illusions of a quick or bloodless victory. He fully expected that the war would require heavy sacrifices, and in the letters he often faults Union military commanders for their lack of aggressiveness. Just two weeks after Shiloh (6-7 April 1862), up to that point the bloodiest battle of the war, Robert complains to Charley that "Those Western Chaps seem to be getting all the glory of the day. They have done some terrible fighting. Here it is hard to realize all this, Everything is done on the plan of 'nobody hurt'" (20 April 1862). He is especially critical of McClellan, whose poor performance during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign comes in for pointed scrutiny in Robert's letter of 3 September 1862. In contrast, Ogden defends the general, arguing that meddling politicians brought about the disaster on the Peninsula. Ogden's impulse to support McClellan may be partially explained by his apparent connections with the Democratic Party; he informs Robert in the same letter that if the Democrats return to power, he may be able to exploit connections in New York to get Robert into the regular army. Ogden's and Nellie's letters to Robert contain much family and social news. The couple's infant daughter, Catherine Shepherd Edwards (born in Manila on 24 May 1862), regularly features, as do the family's domestic arrangements and their wartime reading habits. Nellie writes on 22 November 1861 of putting down Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in favor of contemporary essays and war correspondence from Atlantic, Harper's Weekly, Vanity Fair, and Littel's Living Age: "It is indeed impossible to interest ourselves in the records of dead and buried ages, when (as is so often said) we are every day now living History so rapidly." A number of the letters discuss life in the aftermath of the earthquake that struck Manila in 1863. In his 1 March 1864 letter to Annie, Ned writes that "Manila is a very different place from what it was before the Terremoto": the pulling down & putting up buildings has of course, caused a vast amount of rubish, lime, stones bricks &c &c—to accumalate—all this stuff the Govt have been having carted off & put on all the streets & roads about Manila – So we have the full benefit of Lime dust & one is really stiffled in driving about. The letters from the Philippines are also filled with commentary on the mercantile trade, international politics, and especially the progress of the war. Because mail from the United States often took six weeks or more to reach them in Manila, both Ogden and Nellie constantly sought news of the fighting from all quarters. "It is over five weeks now since the last mail was received," Nellie writes on 23 January 1862, "and we are inexpressibly thirsty for 'news.'" Almost all the Americans living in Manila during the war came from the Northeast, and were thus naturally inclined to support the Union cause. But they also followed developments at home with keen interest because their fortunes in trade were closely tied with Union fortunes on the battlefield; as Ogden himself puts it on 11 January 1862, "Our business for the coming year will much depend upon the course of affairs at home." Generally speaking, the war seems to have had a positive effect on business for Ogden's firm. In a 29 June 1862 letter to Robert, he comments on the increased wartime demand for indigo, used in the manufacture of blue dye for Federal uniforms: You ask about Indigo & if the increased demand has not helped us – Yes we cleared about $4000# on a lot which arrived at the right time – Business has been very good the past 6. mos at least $5pm clear & I think that we shall get about $50.000# for the years work – If so we shall be again in comfortable circumstances – All our earnings since 1856 have gone to make up what was lost during the 15 mos of my absence from Manila but I think affairs are likely to go straight for the future. Robert's last letters were written from Morris Island from 11 to 17 July 1863, the day before his death. They describe combat operations leading up to the 18 July attack. On 10 July 1863, Strong's brigade, including four companies from the 48th New York, landed on the southern tip of Morris Island. Robert's 11 July and 13 July letters describe this landing, which was accomplished under fire as the brigade's flotilla of open boats came within range of Confederate shore batteries. They succeeded in breaking the Confederate defenses and pushed to within 600 yards of Fort Wagner (see Official Records, Series 1, Vol. 28, Part I, p. 12) before it was determined that the fort was too strong to be carried. The 48th New York lost 25 men killed or wounded in this action. An attempt to take the fort by direct assault was made the next day by other elements of the Union expeditionary force, but this was thrown back with heavy losses. Siege operations began in earnest on 12 July, as work commenced on a number of concealed batteries and, further forward, a series of parallel infantry trenches dug to within 700 yards of Wagner's ramparts. Robert's letter to Annie of 16-17 July was written just after his company had returned to camp from a 48-hour stretch in the trenches—"the rifle pits," he writes, "are each merely a trench about six feet wide and two and a half deep, the earth thrown up in front so as to form an embankment covering the men breast high"—where they had to contend with intense heat and blowing sand, as well as sniper fire and an occasionally well-placed shell: "several shells burst so close to us as to make the air sulphurous and one covered me with sand at the bottom of my pit." The Confederates made a probing attack on these advanced lines during the early morning hours of 14 July, but it was repulsed after some close range and even hand-to-hand fighting that Robert describes in detail (Britton's letter also describes this action, noting Robert's coolness under fire). Though duty on the front lines was grueling and dangerous, Morris Island did afford some relief to troops rotating to reserve areas. "Our great luxury here is bathing," Robert writes from the abandoned Confederate camp his regiment occupied; "the beach is a fine one and we frequently take a dip both morning and evening." Rev. Storrs's funeral sermon contains an extract from an unsent letter, recovered with Robert's personal baggage, that he was writing to Annie on the morning of 18 July. In it, Robert reaffirms his commitment to the cause for which he was fighting. "I am satisfied," he writes, "that I shall never find a better use for my life, than to give it up in this War." This he did at the head of his company during that evening's action. The 48th New York struck the fort's southeast salient and sea-face, which they briefly occupied before mounting casualties, some inflicted by the fire of supporting Union regiments, forced the survivors to withdraw. Robert fell after having reached the fort's rampart, where intense fighting raged for more than an hour. Two separate accounts of his death are included in the collection. The first is an excerpt from a 20 August 1863 letter of William W. Edwards to his wife, copied in an unidentified hand. The letter conveys particulars of Robert's death gathered from members of the 48th New York who had been detailed to Brooklyn on recruiting service. The second is Britton's letter to William W. Edwards, written from Hilton Head, South Carolina on 1 January 1864. Not surprisingly, given that both are addressed to grieving family members, the accounts emphasize the heroic nature of Robert's death, indicating that he gained Wagner's parapet and took up the fallen national flag after the regiment's color sergeant was wounded. According to the Edwards excerpt, Robert was shot in the chest after scaling the parapet, and immediately toppled back into the flooded ditch. Britton, a corporal in Robert's company, wrote some five months after the battle to request a copy of Storrs's sermon and to provide Robert's uncle with "a simple & truthful account of all facts connected with the death of your late Nephew." He reports that during the attack he saw Robert's body lying near the top of the rampart, head-down on the slope, with his left side torn away (probably by a canister round). A moment earlier he had seen "Lieut Edwards rushing up the slope of the fort near the parapet, wavering the glorious Stars and Stripes over his head—speaking out in a cool & determined tone—'Come on Company C—follow this Flag—the Fort must be ours.'" Britton's letter attests to the esteem in which Robert was held by his comrades, who to a man "complimented Your Nephew, and all felt that he was 'every inch a Soldier.'" It also bitterly laments the folly of the 18 July attack, which revealed that Fort Wagner's armaments and large garrison of veteran troops, protected by sand and palmetto-log embankments, had survived the massive pre-assault bombardment nearly unscathed. "We were truly decoyed into that slaughter house," Britton writes; "The rebels held out the bate—and we eagerly seized it." The fort finally fell to Union siege forces on 7 September 1863.