The American Civil War: Letters & Diaries contains 849 authors and approximately 52,000 pages of letters, diaries and memoirs. When complete, the collection will include more than 100,000 pages of primary materials. Each source has been carefully chosen using leading bibliographies.

The collection also includes biographies, an extensive bibliography of the sources in the database, and material licensed from The Civil War Day-by-Day by E.B. Long.