James Howe wrote this letter, which discusses extensive Confederate espionage activity in and around Bowling Green, Kentucky, to his sister in 1863. Howe reports that he is currently assigned to watch the Nashville and Louisville train lines as a result of a Confederate attack on a twenty-one car train loaded with Union supplies. He tells of the perpetrators being dressed in full Union Army uniforms stolen from another supply train and mentions that he is being transferred to Nashville, Tennessee in order to help set up a quarantine hospital to handle an increasing smallpox epidemic. He reports that he is looking forward to visiting the capital city.