When this cruel war is over : the Civil War letters of Charles Harvey Brewster /

An officer in the Tenth Massachusetts Infantry, Brewster witnessed three years of war with the Army of the Potomac. Blight (Amherst) has selected and edited his letters home, bringing to readers one of the more reflective collections of Civil War correspondence available in print. The boredom and monotony of camp life, reflections on slavery, emancipation, and blacks including Brewster's own experiences with a "contraband" and the pain and courage of battle are all here, as are descriptions of the Seven Days, Gettysburg, and Grant's 1864 campaign. The letters take on added interest because Brewster's regiment was brigaded with the Second Rhode Island, which counted among its officers Elisha Hunt Rhodes, made famous by PBS's The Civil War series. Blight's annotations go beyond supplemental information to include his own observations, opinions, and occasionally rambling speculations; several of these merely summarize what is already evident from the letters themselves. More rewarding is his insightful introductory essay, which places Brewster's correspondence in the wider context of how soldiers experienced war from 1861 to 1865. Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty. B. D. Simpson; Arizona State University

Brewster enlisted in the Tenth Massachusetts in 1861, eventually earned promotion to second lieutenant, and served until October 1864. This collection of letters to his mother and sisters describes camp life; battle experiences, including Chancellorsville and Gettysburg; and his later recruiting of black troops in Virginia. His letters are perhaps not exceptional within the large corpus of Civil War correspondence, but they intriguingly portray his own insecurities and ambivalent feelings about military life, war, and race. His vindictive attitude toward Southern civilians contrasts sharply with his close relationship with his own Confederate relatives. A good addition to Civil War collections in public or academic libraries.-- Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.