American Historical Ephemera and Early Photography, including The Larry Ness Collection of Native American Photography

Letter signed "R. H. Brett," most likely referring to First Lieutenant Robert H. Brett of Waterloo, NY, Company C, 33rd New York Infantry Regiment.

5 pages, 5 3/16 x 8 in., creased, with some minor wear to edges and tiny losses to crease intersections, very minor soiling and spotting.

First Lieutenant Robert H. Brett writes just days after the brutal battle of Antietam, explaining his delay in writing: "I got your letter in Alixandra [sic] some time ago but could not answer then for we've been having a sort of running fight ever since from Bull Run to Sharpsburg M.D., But Oh Sate what a fight we have had..."

He wastes no time in getting to the details of the bloody encounter, writing, "...in one day I asisted [sic] in butchering over 8,000 rebels. Don't you think I'm a monster, not to say anything of our poor fellows! The people called on McClellan for blood, & he has given them Blood! Sate, the night after the battle I walked among dead bodies all night on picket, my men lieing [sic] on their belly with their guns in their hands, dead bodies on every side of them. And when I went my lonely rounds I had to put my face close down to distinguish the living from the dead." He continues to give gruesome details of the carnage left behind by such a battle.

Brett then writes that he had command of Company H during the battle, and that 47 men and 3 officers were killed & wounded in the course of the battle, including one of "my boys" who was shot through the heart very near Brett. He writes how he allowed some of the Confederate soldiers to come close to the picket line and remove their wounded men, and some soldiers in the woods began firing at him until the colonel of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment stopped them, shouting, "Don't you see he lets our men come get the wounded?"

Robert H. Brett enlisted as a first sergeant on 30 April 1861, mustering into Company C of the 33rd New York Infantry Regiment the following month. He was promoted shortly thereafter to first lieutenant on 29 July. He mustered out with his regiment two years later at Geneva, NY, on 2 June 1863.