The collection consists of selected 1860s correspondence of Stearns (Princeton Class of 1867). The nineteen letters shed light on the effects of the Civil War on Princeton, while providing a cross-sectional look at Princeton student life at the time. The early letters, written in 1862 and 1863, are from Lewis's friend Peter Jacobus (Princeton Class of 1868) and Lewis's brother Seargent Prentiss Stearns (Princeton Class of 1864); at that time Lewis was a student at the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The boys write about student life, the competition for the junior oration, their classes and professors, baseball, mutual friends, and the students who left the college to join the army. In a letter dated November 5, 1862, Jacobus includes a poem about Lewis's love life; others include ink drawings and humor. In a letter dated November 19, 1862, Sergeant describes two murders that were discovered in town, including that of a Princeton jeweler. In his first letter home to his mother and father, Rev. Jonathan French Stearns, in Newark, N.J., from the College of New Jersey, dated June 19, 1863, Lewis writes about students building a fire on campus around the cannon and burning an effigy of Clement Vallandigham, the most prominent of the "Copperheads" or the "Peaceful Democrats," to celebrate his return to Ohio. He also writes to his brother Seargent and to his sister, Annie, describing his classes, the faculty, examinations, and the burning down of a barn and of a poor man's house in Jugtown, N.J.

Also included are typed transcriptions of all the letters.