Center for American War Letters

The Center for American War Letters (CAWL) is an archival and public-history center at Chapman University in Orange, California, devoted to preserving, organizing, and making accessible personal correspondence connected with American military conflicts. The center was established in 2013 after historian and author Andrew Carroll donated more than 100,000 war letters to Chapman University. Its holdings represent every American conflict, making the collection broader than an archive focused on a single war or period. The center is housed in Chapman University's Leatherby Libraries. Its collections include extensive correspondence from the Civil War, the First and Second World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, and later American military engagements. The Second World War holdings alone comprise more than 40 linear feet of correspondence. The archive's materials provide first-person evidence about military service, combat, separation, family life, morale, political attitudes, and the experience of war on the home front. Because many items are personal letters rather than official military records, the collection is particularly valuable for social historians, genealogists, students, and researchers studying the emotional and everyday dimensions of conflict. Among the better-known objects associated with the center are a letter written on stationery found in Adolf Hitler's office and a Civil War letter from Union General William T. Sherman. These materials illustrate the range of the archive, which includes both ordinary correspondence and historically notable documents. In addition to letters, the center preserves related war ephemera and uses those materials in exhibitions. The CAWL serves both academic researchers and the general public. Visitors can consult holdings at the center during business hours, and regular exhibitions present selected letters and associated artifacts. Some portions of the collection have been made available through the Online Archive of California and Chapman University's Digital Commons repository. A Foundations-level grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded through its Standing Together Initiative, supported digitization work intended to improve online access to the archive. The available reference material does not specify the grant year or amount. The center's significance also extends through publications based on the letters and related research. Works associated with the collection include Andrew Carroll's War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars, Behind the Lines, Operation Homecoming, and My Fellow Soldiers: General John Pershing and the Americans Who Helped Win the Great War. These publications helped bring wartime correspondence to audiences beyond the reading room and contributed to the broader use of letters as sources for military and cultural history. CAWL is an institutional archive rather than a commercial consumer brand. Its core activities are collection stewardship, preservation, digitization, research access, exhibition, and public interpretation. Its present role is tied to Chapman University's libraries and scholarly infrastructure, while its collections continue to support research into the experiences of Americans who served in wars and the families and communities connected to them.

The Center for American War Letters emerged from historian and author Andrew Carroll's effort to preserve and share correspondence written by American service members and their families. In 2013, Carroll donated more than 100,000 war letters to Chapman University, leading to the establishment of a dedicated center within the university's Leatherby Libraries in Orange, California. The donation gave Chapman a substantial primary-source collection covering the history of American warfare across multiple periods rather than a narrowly defined conflict or military branch. The archive represents every American conflict, with particularly extensive holdings from the Second World War. The World War II correspondence occupies more than 40 linear feet and forms part of a larger body of letters documenting military service, deployment, combat, family relationships, separation, and reactions to events at home and abroad. The holdings include both correspondence from ordinary participants and documents connected to prominent historical figures. Notable examples include a Civil War letter from General William T. Sherman and a letter written on stationery discovered in Adolf Hitler's office. From its base at Chapman, the center developed as both a research repository and a public-history institution. Scholars and members of the public may visit during business hours to examine holdings, while exhibitions regularly place selected letters and other wartime ephemera in historical context. This combination of original-document access and public display reflects the center's emphasis on personal testimony as a way to understand the human consequences of war. The archive has also pursued wider digital availability. Some holdings are accessible through the Online Archive of California and Chapman University's Digital Commons repository. The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a Foundations-level grant through the Standing Together Initiative for digitization work, supporting the long-term goal of making more of the collection available to researchers online. The reference material does not provide the grant's date or financial value. The center's materials have informed and supported books about American military correspondence and wartime experience. Associated publications include War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars, Behind the Lines, Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, and My Fellow Soldiers: General John Pershing and the Americans Who Helped Win the Great War. Through these works, letters held or gathered within the broader project have reached readers outside the university archive. Today, the Center for American War Letters functions as a Chapman University archival center focused on preservation, cataloging, digitization, exhibition, and research access. It is not a commercial product company; its institutional value lies in maintaining a large, varied record of personal wartime communication and making that record useful for scholarship, education, and public understanding.

• 2013

  Center established at Chapman University

  [1]Center for American War Lettersen.wikipedia.org

  Chapman University established the center after Andrew Carroll donated more than 100,000 American war letters.

A university-based archival and public-history center preserving first-person correspondence from the full span of American conflicts and connecting original documents with researchers, students, and the public.

• Archival collection · 2013

  American war letters collection

  The center's principal holding is a large collection of correspondence connected with every American conflict. It includes letters from service members, families, and other participants, covering subjects such as combat, deployment, separation, morale, and life on the home front. The collection includes more than 40 linear feet of World War II correspondence, along with notable Civil War and modern-era materials.

• Digital archive

  Digital archival access

  Selected materials from the center are available through the Online Archive of California and Chapman University's Digital Commons repository. Digitization work supported by an NEH Foundations-level grant is intended to expand the amount of material that can be consulted online, although the available source does not specify the project's completion date.

• Museum and educational program

  Public exhibitions

  Regular exhibitions present selected war letters, documents, and related ephemera to visitors. The exhibitions translate archival holdings into public-history programming and highlight personal experiences of American military conflict.

• Pursuit of large-scale digitizationStrategy

  Background

  Much of the center's collection consists of physical correspondence that can be difficult for distant researchers to consult.

  Action taken

  The center pursued digitization with support from a Foundations-level National Endowment for the Humanities grant awarded through the Standing Together Initiative, while also making selected holdings available through established California and Chapman University repositories.

  Aftermath

  Some materials became available online, with the broader digitization effort intended to improve long-term research access. The available source does not state the grant year, amount, or completion status.

  Source

1. 1Center for American War Lettersen.wikipedia.org