One former Union soldier, Burritt Stiles (pictured here), submitted a letter to the Left-Hand Penmanship Exhibition (see illustration, here), “trying for the Prize of fifty dollars.” In New Orleans when the war broke out, Stiles pluckily made his way north, via Cuba, and enlisted in Company A, Fourteenth Connecticut Volunteers. In the letter, the first page of which is shown here, Stiles describes his experience in the battle of the Wilderness, where he received the wound that resulted in the amputation of his arm.