The last great surge of popular voluntary enlistment swept up Winters, a thirty-two-year-old saddle and harness maker and father of three from Indiana. Like so many others in the Civil War, Winters was a prolific correspondent, and through his letters we have a record of some lesser-known campaigns. Winters served in the siege of Vicksburg and in the Red River Campaign, frequently as a nurse, a role that emphasized for him the darker side of the war. These letters and journal entries show a sensitive man who reflects upon both the loveliness of the southern locales in which he found himself and the hideousness of war.