Charles Harvey Brewster: Letters from the Civil War Front (1862) Born and raised in a poor family in Massachusetts, Charles Brewster enlisted in the Union army at age 27. His letter reveals some of his expectations, ambitions, and ultimately the reality of serving in the Union army for the ordinary American soldier. Charles would survive the war and become successful afterwards. Below is a letter written to his sister. Dear Mattie I received your most welcome letter accompanying the stockings, and also the pictures for which I cannot find words to express my thanks. I have to look at them fifty times a day. I am in camp alone to day as the Company is out on Grand Guard to day and as I went both of the last two times with them I managed to stay in this time. I have been slightly unwell for two or three days but have got pretty much over it now. We have had another grand excitement over orders to march which we received last week. They were positive and we were to start at 3 o'clock in the morning but they were countermanded before 8 o'clock the same afternoon, and we are still here, but we are under standing orders to be ready at a moment’s notice, and to have 100 rounds of ammunition per man, and two days rations cooked all the time, and daily expecting orders to start, every man also is ordered to take an extra pair of shoes in his knapsack so it looks as if we were to have a long pull when we do move. Capt Lombard got a furlough the other day and started for home, and got as far as Washington where he got such information as convinced him that we should march in less than a week and he came back and gave it up. We were intended the other day to reinforce Gen Banks but the Rebels made no resistance to his advance and consequently we were not needed, and when it is proposed to send us next I am sure I cannot imagine. We have had quite a row about giving up slaves and about the secessionists in this neighborhood and it threatened to be quite a serious affair for a time but things are quieter now. Capt Miller of Shelbourne Falls undertook to put all the Contrabands out of camp and myself and several other officers refused to give up our servants, at his order for we doubted his authority in the matter, as the Col had heretofor given us to understand that he was not opposed to our keeping them, and had appeared to be quite anti Slavery in his views, but he took the matter in hand and read the order for their expulsion at the head of the Regt and pretended to consider it a mutiny and altogether got himself into a terrible rage about it, and went over to the pro Slavery side body and soul. So it seems that the prime object of our being in this country is to return niggers to their masters. I don't think Massachusetts blood was ever quite so riled nor quite so humbled before, but we had to submit. I was mad enough to resign, if I had not thought it would please our slave catching brutes too much, we have a good many of that class among our officers, and I believe Major Marsh would go further to return a fugitive slave than he would to save the Union. The stockings you sent were first rate. I have not put them on yet, but they look like just the thing I want Source: David W. Blight ed. When This Cruel War is Over: The Civil War Letters of Charles Harvey Brewster. (University of Massachusetts Press, 1971)
Enter the password to open this PDF file:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-